GS DR. E. SPRUCE OSi EQUATOEIAL-AMERICAI?^ PALMS. 



him several new genera and species, most of whicli have been 

 described and figured in his great -work on the Flora of Brazil, 

 and in the ' Nova Genera et Species Plantarum Brasilienslum.' 



Nor did he leave the minute cryptogamic tribes ungathered; 

 and it is to him we owe our first knowledge of several fine species. 

 Perliaps the handsomest of all the mosses of the Amazonian plain 

 is Lencohryum Martianum (Hsch.); and it has the rare peculiarity 

 (in that family) of gay colour, the snowy foliage of the stems 

 contrasting beautifully with the crimson involucral leaves. In the 

 sombre forests of the Hio Negro this moss, along with two fine 

 hepaticse, Lopltocolea Martiana (Nees) and Jimgermannia Ftery- 

 gopTiyllwn (Mart.), sometimes with tufts of Hymenophyllum or 

 Trichomanes interspersed, completely invest the prostrate trunlvS 

 of the fallen monarchs of the forest, and hide their decay under 

 a tapestry of the rarest beauty. 



A distinguished zoologist, Mr. A. E. Wallace, had already been 

 some time on the Amazon when I arrived there. In addition to 

 his special pursuits, he found time to make sketches of the most 

 notable of the palms he encountered in his travels. Those sketches 

 were among the very few things he was ahle to rescue from the 

 flames when the ship in which he was homeward bound was burnt 

 in the middle of the Atlantic ocean ; and he afterwards published 

 them in a handy volume, which contains the most characteristic 

 representations of American palms that exist within a small com- 

 pass*. They were accompanied by so full an accoxmt of the uses 

 of the principal kinds, that it almost precludes the necessity of my 

 devoting any space to that topic ; and I shall accordingly rarely 

 touch on it, except where the use to which a palm is put illustrates 

 its structure. 



Mr. Wallace worked at palms chiefly on the Kio Negro, where 

 he preceded me by about a year. It was there he found ana 

 figured two most remarkable palms, which he has published under 

 the name of Leopoldinia Tiassaba and Mauritia Carand, The 

 first of these I w^as able to describe pretty fully in the Linnean 

 Journal for 1860, and to show that Mr. Wallace had rightly 

 placed it in Leojpoldinia \ but the second, I regret to say, my ma- 

 terials have not enabled me to illustrate as it deserves, although 

 they suifiee to prove it so far distinct from typical Mauritia as to 

 take rank at least as a subgenus. 



♦ Palm-trees of the Amazon and their uses. By Alfred Russel Wa^*^' 

 1853. 



