The plains of Venezuela, known under the name of Llanos, are principally covered with grass-like plants, such as _Kyllingia_, _Cenchrus_, and _Raspalum_. With these we find a few dicotyledonous plants, such as _Turnera_; some _Malvaceæ_, and, what is very remarkable, species of _Mimosa_, with leaves quite sensitive to the touch, which the Spaniards call _Dornuderas_. The same race of cows which in Spain fatten upon sainfoin and clover, here find excellent nourishment in the herbaceous sensitive plants. The pasturage is richest, not only near rivers subject to inundations, but also where the trunks of the palm-trees are the most crowded, which can not be attributable to the shelter and protection which they have from the sun’s rays, since the palm of the Llanos (_Corypha tectorum_) has only a very few corrugated and palmate leaves, like those of _Chamærops_, and the lower are always parched and dried up. Besides the isolated trunks of palms we also find, here and there, in the Llanos, groups of palms, in which the _Corypha_ mingles with a tree of the family of _Proteaceæ_--a new species of _Rhopala_, with hard and resonant leaves. In the Llanos of Caracas, the _Corypha_ extends from the Mesa de Paja to Guayaval. More to the north and northwest it is replaced by another species of the same genus, with leaves equally palmate, but much larger. To the south of Guayaval other palms predominate, chiefly the pinnate-leaved _Piritu_ (_Guilielma speciosa_) and the _Mauritia flexuosa_, the sago-tree of America, which supplies farinaceous food, good wine, thread to weave into hammocks, clothes, and baskets; its fruit, in shape resembling pine-cones, being covered with scales, like those of _Calamus_ (Rotang), with something of the taste of an apple. The Guaranes, whose very existence, so to speak, depends on the Murichi palm, obtain an acid and very refreshing fermented liquor from it. This palm has large, shiny, corrugated, and fan-like leaves, maintaining a most beautiful verdure in times of the greatest drought. The sight of it alone in the Llanos produces an agreeable and refreshing sensation; and the Murichi, laden with its scaly fruit, contrasts singularly with the sad aspect of the palm of Cobija, the leaves of which are always gray and covered with dust.