146 MR, SPRUCE’S EXCURSION ON THE AMAZON. . 
made his way to an Indian cottage which we had passed a few minutes 
before, and soon returned with a heavy American felling-axe. With 
this he succeeded in severing the trunk, but not until he had well 
blistered his hands. The drupes resemble in size and colour our small 
black grapes, only they are more elongated, and they hang in small 
panicles. The Brazilians compare them, and justly, to the small variety 
of olive which is imported in great quantities from Portugal. They 
have a slight bloom on them, and the pellicle is studded with pallid 
glandular dots. The pulp is about the eighth of an inch in thickness ; 
it is good eating, though with a strong resinous flavour, much resem- 
bling that of an edible myrtle frequent on the campos, and a wine is 
made from it in the same way as that of the Assaf Palm. The testa is 
horny and very thin; albumen none; cotyledons amygdaloid, rose- 
coloured on the inner face; embryo pendulous from a little below the 
apex of the seed. The 6-cleft calyx is persistent, but not enlarged in 
fruit as in most of the Lawraceæ I have seen on the Amazon. 
I had long suspected the dioicity of the Itaüba; I have now con- 
firmed it; and I find that I gathered male flowers on the 30th of April, 
though at the time I did not recognize the tree, which was small and 
young, and grew in a part of the forest quite near to Santarem, which 
had been cut down some dozen years ago. On revisiting the place 
within these few days, I found two or three female trees, of the same 
size, growing near, and laden with unripe fruit. The male inflores- 
.  eence is of minute yellowish-green flowers, arranged in small umbels on 
à raceme. Perianth 6-cleft, in two series. Stamens 3, fleshy, with 2 
anther-cells (rarely 3) imbedded in their substance, and opening out- 
wardly by an orbicular operculum, These characters seem to indicate 
a genus hitherto undescribed, and certainly prove the Itaüba to be dis- 
tinct from the Greenheart of Demerara (Nectandra Rodiai), with which 
some of the English settlers here have supposed it identical. 
As I have before informed you, the Itaiiba is the most valuable 
timber for shipbuilding which the Amazon affords. Its range seems 
to be from the mouth of the Tapajoz to that of the Rip Negro, and it 
is most abundant on the Rio Trombétas. It prefers gravelly or stony 
rising ground, and is never found in marshes. — 
(To be continued.) 
