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Show AN OTATIO S AND ADDITIONS. 313 and 45°.5 Fahr. ), and the mean temperature scarcely amounts to 11° Reaumur, or 56°.8 Fahrenheit. These Alpine Palms grow among Nut trees, yew-leaved species of Podocarpus and Oaks (Quercus granatensis). I have determined by exact barometrical measurement the upper and lower limits of the range of the Waxpalm. We first began to find it on the eastern declivity of Andes of Quindiu, at the height of 7440 (about 7930 English) feet above the level of the sea, and it extended upwards as far as the Garita del Paramo and los Volcancitos, or to 9100 (almost 9700 English) feet: several years after my departure from the country, the distinguished botanist Don Jose Caldas, who had been long our companion amidst the mountains of New Grenada, and who afterwards fell a victim to Spanish party hatred, found three species of palms growing in the Paramo de Guanacos very near the limits of perpetual snow; therefore, probably at an elevation of more than 13,000 (13,855 English) feet. (Semanario de Santa Fe de Bogota, 1809, No. 21, p. 163.) Even beyond the tropics, in the latitude of 28° north, the Chamrerops martiana reaches on the sub-Himalayan mountains a height of 5000 English feet. (Wallich, Plantre Asiaticre, vol. iii. tab. 211.) If we look for the extreme geographical limits of palms (which are also the extreme climatic limits in all the species which inhabit localities but little raised above the level of the sea), we see some, as the date-palm, the Chamrerops humilis, C. palmetto, and the Areca sapida of New Zealand, advance far into the temperate zones of either hemisphere, into regions where the mean temperature of the year hardly equals 11°.2 and 12°.5 Reaumur (57°.2, and 60°.2 Fahrenheit). If we form a series of cultivated plants or trees, placed in order of succession according to the degree of heat they require, and beginning with the maximum, we have Cacao, Indigo, Plantains, Coffee, Cotton, Date-palms, Orange and Lemon Trees, Olives, Sweet Chestnuts, and Vines. In Europe, date-palms (introduced, not indigenous) grow mingled with Chamrerops humilis in the parallels of 43 to and 44 °, as on the Genoese Rivera del Ponente, near Bordighera, between Monaco and San Stefano, where there is an assemblage of more than 4000 palm-stems; and in Dalmatia round Spalatro. It is remarkable that Chamrerops humilis is abun- 27 |
