The meeting of the stiff marl and the fine sand was abrupt, and well marked by the vegetation.

On one side of the ravine the tall fan-leaved Carats marked the rich soil; on the other, the sand and gravel loving Cocorites appeared at once, crowding their ostrich plumes together.

Most of them were the common species of the island {202a} in which the pinnae of the leaves grow in fours and fives, and at different angles from the leaf-stalk, giving the whole a brushy appearance, which takes off somewhat from the perfectness of its beauty.

But among them we saw- -for the first and last time in the forest--a few of a far more beautiful species, {202b} common on the mainland.

In it, the pinnae are set on all at the same distance apart, and all in the same plane, in opposite sides of the stalk, giving to the whole foliage a grand simplicity; and producing, when the curving leaf-points toss in the breeze, that curious appearance, which I mentioned in an earlier chapter, of green glass wheels with rapidly revolving spokes.