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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 345 the under side of the leaf. The original native country of this tree is unknown to us. By the connection and intercourse of Buddhistic communities, it early passed from the temple-gardens of China to those of Japan. In travelling from a port on the Pacific to Mexico, on our way to Europe, I witnessed the singular and painful impression which the first sight of a pine forest near Chilpanzingo made on one of our companions, who, born at Quito under the equinoctial line, had never seen needle-trees, or trees with "folia acerosa." It seemed to him as if the trees were leafless; and he thought that, as we were travelling towards the cold north, he ab:eady recognised, in this extreme contraction of the vegetable organs, the chilling and impoverishing influence of the Pole. The traveller whose impressions I here describe, whose name neither my friend Bonpland nor myself can pronounce without regret, was Don Carlos Montufar (son of the Marquis of Selvalegre), an excellent young man, whose noble and ardent love of freedom led him, a few years later, in the war of independence of the Spanish Colonies, to meet courageously a violent death, of which the dishonor did not fall on him. ( 24) p. 242.-" The Pothos-form, Aroidem." Caladium and Pothos are exclusively forms of the tropical world; the species of Arum belong more to the temperate zone. Arum italicum, A. dracunculus, and A. tenuifolium, extend to !stria and Friuli. No Pothos has yet been discovered in Africa. India has some species of this genus (Pothos scandens and P. pinnata) which are less beautiful in their physiognomy, and less luxuriant in their growth, than the American species. We discovered a beautiful and truly arborescent member of the group of Aroidere (Caladium arboreum) having stems from 16 to 21 English feet high, not far from the convent of Caripe, to the east of Cumanas. A very curious Caladium (Culcasia scandens) has been discovered by Beauvois in the kingdom of Benin. (Palisot de Beauvois, Flore d'Oware et de Benin, t. i. 1804, p. 4, pl. iii.) In the Pothos-form the parenchyma is sometimes so much extended that the surface of the leaf is interrupted by holes as in Calla pertusa (Kunth), and Dracontium pertusum (Jacquin), which we collected in the woods round Cumana. |