DB, B. SPEUCE ON EQFATOBIAL-AMERICAN PALMS. 67 



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(in 1819-20). Protected by the Emperor of Brazil, and provided 

 by the government of that country with all possible aids in the 

 prosecution of his enterprise (rarely lacking numerous Indians 

 to row his boats and to cut down or climb the trees of which he 

 desired to secure specimens) he possessed advantages seldom en- 

 joyed by a solitary botanist travelling and working in so modest 

 a way as myself. And it must be admitted that he made the best 

 possible use of those advantages, and that the amount of work 

 performed by him in that short space of time was enormoiis. The 

 family of Palms had all through his previous travel in the central 

 and southern provinces of Brazil engaged his particular attention, 

 and on the Amazon he found a grand and almost virgin field for their 

 study. Of the nobler and loftier species, growing along the banks 

 of the main river, scarcely any were left unnoticed by him ; and 

 among the smaller species, hidden away in the primeval forests, 

 he detected many new and striking forms. The palms collected by 

 Martius on the Amazon amount to about sixty-six species, by far 

 the most of them new, and scarcely more than ten of the whole 

 number known to exist elsewhere at the date of his published 

 descriptions of them. Of the eighteen genera in which those species 

 were comprised, four were new and peculiar to the Amazon region ; 

 and of a fifth new genus {(Enocarpus) ^ containing five species, 

 only one species was known to the author beyond the Amazon, 

 in the neighbouring province of Maranhao. In JBactris alone, he 

 enumerated seventeen Amazon species, all but one peculiar to 

 that region j and Geonoma had eight (or nine) species not then 

 known elsewhere. Of the genus Astrocm^yum^ counting altogether 

 ten species, seven were found by him on tlie Amazon, and only 

 one of the seven in any other part of Brazil. Such are a few of 

 the results of his travel and work on the Amazon. 



Dr. Martius's study of the Palms of Brazil was afterwards sup- 

 plemented by that of the Palms of the rest of the world ; and the 

 result was made public in the ' Grenera et Species Palmarum ' 

 the noblest monograph of any family of plants which has ever 

 issued from the press, and which will cause the name of Martius 

 to be mentioned along with that of Palms to the end of all 



time. 



I confess to have followed the steps of this great botanist with 

 ever-increasing admiration ; for not only did he explore the ground 

 for palms, almost exhaustively, along his whole line of travel, but 

 plants of all other faznilies were eagerly collected, and afforded 



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