Notes of a naturalist in South America - Ball John

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6

The heights given in the text are those of the railway stations.

7

Of 138 genera of Helianthoïdeæ 107 are exclusively confined to the American continent, 18 more are common to America and distant regions of the earth, one only is limited to tropical Asia, and two to tropical Africa, the remainder being scattered among remote islands – the Sandwich group, the Galapagos, Madagascar, and St. Helena.

8

In Nature for September 14, 1882.

9

The only accurate information that I have found respecting the climate of Lima is contained in a paper by Rouand y Paz Soldan, “Resumen de las Observaciones Meteorologicas hechas en Lima durante 1869,” quoted in the French translation of Grisebach’s “Vegetation du Globe.” Reduced to English measures, they give the following results: —

There is reason to think that the temperature for July, 1869, given above was exceptionally low, and although the months during which fogs prevail are abnormally cool for a place within 13° of the equator, I believe that the thermometer rarely falls below 60° Fahr.

10

See Appendix A, On the Fall of Temperature in ascending to Heights above the Sea-level.

11

It is a curious illustration of the utterly untrustworthy character of statements made by unscientific travellers to read the following passage in a book published by a recent traveller in South America, who visited Chicla in November, the beginning of summer. He declares that the fringe of green vegetation “dwindles and withers at a height of nine or ten thousand feet;… while on the upper grounds, where sometimes rain is plentiful, the air is too keen and cold for even the most dwarfish and stunted vegetation to thrive.”

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