DR. E. SPEUCE ON EQIJATORIAL-AMERICAN PALMS. 65 



4 



-/.Palmce Amazoiiica^^ sive Enumeratio Palmarum in itincre siio per 



regiopes Ainericse sequatorialcs lectarum. Auctore ErcAUDO 



SpiMce, Ph.D., RE.a.S. 



F 



[Read January 21, 1869»] 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTOKT. 



TnE Palms described in the following pages are not to be under- 

 stood as comprising all the species known to exist in the Amazon 

 valley/nor even all those seen there by the author, but only those 

 whicli he was able to preserve specimens of, and to describe, 

 more or less completely, on the spot. The chief object of his 

 travel being to collect herbarium specimens in large quantity, 

 certain families were, from the unwieldy size of their leaves and 

 inflorescence, or from their succulent nature, almost entirely 

 excluded from the general collection, and were rarely sought for 

 except when circumstances confined him for a length of time to 

 some very limited area whereon he had already almost exhausted 

 the exogenous and cryptogamic flora. The plants thus only 

 partially gathered and studied are chiefly Palms, Arads, Cyclanths, 

 and Bromels. "Whenever, therefore, any locality is mentioned in 



the following enumeration with great frequency, it would be 

 erroneous to conclude that more palms really exist there than in 

 other localities which are rarely spoken of. It is rather to be 

 taken as a measure of (in other respects) lost time to the authoi* 

 — of swollen rivers and inundated forests, rendered nearly or 

 quite intransitable — of the superintendence of (too often) lazy 

 and drunken Indians at the building and caulking of boats — of 

 regions and seasons of scarcity, when from actual deficiency of 

 food he was unable to move far away from his resting-place, and 

 was thrown back on describing and preserving such objects as 

 were close at hand. If not many of the larger species of palms 

 appear in the following enumeration, it is partly because the col- 

 lecting and preserving of such requires much time and labour, 

 which could mostly be better bestowed, and partly because a large 

 proportion of them have already been described and figured 



* A few palms of my gathering are unavoidably omitted, the epecimcnB being 

 deposited in the Museum at Kew, which I have been unable to revisit. And 

 although Dr. Hooker has most liberally placed in my hands all the herbarium- 

 specimens of palms collected by myself, the museum-specimens are too bulky 



lilKN. raOC. — BOTA^T, TOIi. XI. t^ 



