Villavicencio is in a transition area between mountains and plains, between Orinoco and Amazon drainages, and between savanna and forest. There is great variety of landscape and habitat types and very rich fauna and flora. The eastern slope of the Andes was originally covered with forest and remains so, except where man has destroyed the forest resulting in the replacement of the forest by grass. The band of forest on the lower slopes is called foothill forest. It extends up to about 1200 meters, where its character changes because of the increase of fog. Its lower limit is where the steep slopes end at about 500 m. The forest at the base of themts is called Piedmont. It is continuous with the Amazon forest in the south. In the Orinoco drainage area it forms a distinct belt for 15-20 km. before giving way to savannas and associated forests of other types. This piedmont forest is a rain-forest of several storeys, with very dense canopy and scanty undergrowth. It has heavy rainfall rather evenly distributed throughout the yr. The savannas have a development apparently related to the rainfall. Their present vegetation is detd. by the frequent fires, and it seems unlikely that they are an ancient type. They occur on various types of terrain. Their forests are varied. The rel. humidity of the air in the forest remains high all through the day, and there is a low evaporation rate. Forest climate shows stratification[long dash]uniformly moist below and relatively warm and dry in the canopy.