190 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
two Bactrides, and two or three species of Geonoma. I send you spe- 
cimens of all these, but I should like to have time to observe them 
more fully before sending the descriptions. Perhaps the noblest Palm 
in the forests of the Barra is the Patand, of which the trunk some- 
times reaches eighty feet in height, and the fronds are of immense size. 
An entire spadix, laden with fruit, is a heavy load for a man. The fruits 
are very oily, but the only use made of them here is in the preparation 
of a wine similar to that of the Assaf. Trunks of a few years’ growth 
are thickly beset with slender, rigid spines, about two feet in length, 
pointing upwards; these are the nerves of the sheathing base of the 
petioles, from which the parenchyma has decayed ; they are called by 
the natives “ Barba de Patana.” When the trunk reaches fifteen or 
twenty feet in height, the “beard” begins to decay at the base, and 
the upper part, being thus deprived of its support, falls down in a mass. 
From the circumstance of this envelope, I at first thought the species 
might be @nocarpus circumtertus, Mart., but the pinne being merely 
acute, and not * abrupte longe acuminate,” forbids such a conclusion. 
The Inajá (Maximiliana regia, Mart.) has the trunk similarly beset 
with the bases of the petioles, until it reaches a certain height, and an 
Inajá of forty feet high looks a quite different plant from one of twenty 
feet. Of the “ Barba de Patana” the Indians make the arrows for their 
Gravatanas, or blowing-canes. The Gravatána itself is made of the 
trunk of a small Palm, an Jriartea, which I have met with deep in the 
forest at the back of the Barra. It is called Paziuba-¢, or the little 
Paziába, and is from ten to eighteen feet high, the thickness being 
little more than an inch. The upper part of the stem and the sheaths 
of the petioles are clad with dense greyish pubescence, intermixed 
with blackish sete, which stick into the hands when touched, pro- 
ducing a sensation like the hairs of Cowage. The pinne resemble 
those of J. exorrhiza in form and cutting, but they are pubescent, 
sparsely above, densely beneath. The fruit is rather smaller than @ 
nut-kernel, vermilion, cylindraceo-obovate and subcurvate ; mesocarp 
very thin; endocarp a thin green mucilaginous membrane, traversed 
longitudinally by about ten white anastomosing fibres ; albumen whitish 
corneous. The spathes are three, plano-convex, closely investing the 
peduncle; the lowest naked, the two upper pubescent. 
T have called this Palm Zriartea pruriens, but I should like to see J. 
setigera, Mart., before I decide upon its being new. The latter is de- 
scribed as growing fifty feet high, and nothing is said about the pubes- 
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