In These Three Places The Thermometer Sometimes Keeps Up For Several Hours Between 0 And 4 Degrees (Centigrade); And Yet

(A circumstance which appears to be very remarkable) snow has never been seen to fall; and notwithstanding the great lowering

Of the temperature, the bananas and the palm-trees are as beautiful around Canton, Macao and the Havannah as in the plains nearest the equator.

In the island of Cuba the lowering of the temperature lasts only during intervals of such short duration that in general neither the banana, the sugar-cane nor other productions of the torrid zone suffer much. We know how well plants of vigorous organization resist temporary cold, and that the orange trees of Genoa survive the fall of snow and endure cold which does not more than exceed 6 or 7 degrees below freezing-point. As the vegetation of the island of Cuba bears the character of the vegetation of the regions near the equator, we are surprised to find even in the plains a vegetable form of the temperate climates and mountains of the equatorial part of Mexico. I have often directed the attention of botanists to this extraordinary phenomenon in the geography of plants. The pine (Pinus occidentalis) is not found in the Lesser Antilles; not even in Jamaica (between 17 3/4 and 18 1/2 degrees of latitude). It is only seen further north, in the mountains of San Domingo, and in all that part of the island of Cuba situated between 20 and 23 degrees of latitude. It attains a height of from sixty to seventy feet; and it is remarkable that the cahoba* (mahogany (* Swieteinia Mahogani, Linn.)) and the pine vegetate at the island of Pinos in the same plains. We also find pines in the south-eastern part of the island of Cuba, on the declivity of the Copper Mountains where the soil is barren and sandy. The interior table-land of Mexico is covered with the same species of coniferous plants; at least the specimens brought by M. Bonpland and myself from Acaguisotla, Nevado de Toluca and Cofre de Perote do not appear to differ specifically from the Pinus occidentalis of the West India Islands described by Schwartz. Now those pines which we see at sea level in the island of Cuba, in 20 and 22 degrees of latitude, and which belong only to the southern part of that island, do not descend on the Mexican continent between the parallels of 17 1/2 and 19 1/2 degrees, below the elevation of 500 toises. I even observed that, on the road from Perote to Xalapa in the eastern mountains opposite to the island of Cuba, the limit of the pines is 935 toises; while in the western mountains, between Chilpanzingo and Acapulco, near Quasiniquilapa, two degrees further south, it is 580 toises and perhaps on some points 450. These anomalies of stations are very rare in the torrid zone and are probably less connected with the temperature than with the nature of the soil.

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