from want of fresh water, drink the juice of the sugar-cane, and, what is very remarkable in a physiological point of view, likewise sea-water. On the Society, Friendly, and Sandwich Islands, the light green and thick stemmed sugar-cane is everywhere cultivated. In addition to the _Caña de Otaheiti_ and the _Caña criolla_, a reddish African sugar-cane is cultivated in the West Indies, which is known as the _Caña de Guinea_. It is less succulent than the common Asiatic variety, but its juice is esteemed especially well adapted for the preparation of rum. In the province of Caracas the light green of the Tahitian sugar-cane forms a beautiful contrast with the dark shade of the cacao plantations. Few tropical trees have so thick a foliage as the _Theobroma Cacao_. This noble tree thrives best in hot and humid valleys. Extreme fertility of soil and insalubrity of atmosphere are as inseparably connected in South America as in Southern Asia. Nay, it has even been observed that in proportion as the cultivation of the land increases, and the woods are removed, the soil and the climate become less humid, and the cacao plantations thrive less luxuriantly. But while they diminish in numbers in the province of Caracas, they spread rapidly in the eastern provinces of New Barcelona and Cumana, more especially in the humid woody region lying between Cariaco and the Golfo Triste. Footnote 2: p. 1—“_The natives term this phenomenon ‘banks.’_” The Llanos of Caracas are covered with a widely-extended formation of ancient conglomerate. On passing from the valleys of Aragua over the most southern range of the coast chain of Guigue and Villa de Cura, descending towards Parapara, the traveller meets successively with strata of gneiss and micaceous schist, a probably _Silurian_ transition rock of argillaceous schist and black limestone; serpentine and greenstone in detached spheroidal masses; and lastly, on the margin of the great plain, small elevations of augitic amygdaloid and porphyritic schist. These hills between Parapara and Ortiz appear to me to be produced by volcanic eruptions on the old sea-shore of the Llanos. Further to the north, rise the far-famed cavernous and grotesquely-shaped elevations known as the Morros de San Juan, which form a species of devil’s dyke, the grain of which is crystalline, like upheaved dolomite. They are, therefore, to be regarded rather as portions of the shore than as islands in the ancient gulf. I consider the Llanos to have been a gulf, for when their inconsiderable elevation above the present sea level, the adaptation of their form to the rotation current, running from east to west, and the lowness of the eastern shore between the mouth of the Orinoco and the Essequibo are taken into account, it can scarcely be doubted that the sea once overflowed the whole of this basin between the coast chain and the