BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 279 
be kind enough to indicate the Natural Orders of any new genera you 
may propose, in future? I see you have made two species out of the 
Sapotacea n. 926: one of them, Lucuma lateriflora, is of the gape, 
the other, Z. parviflora, of the terra firme. I noticed slight differences 
when I gathered them. The Indians say that not a single plant of the 
Gapó is found in the Mato Virgem da terra firme (Urwald), and I am 
now certain that they are almost literally correct. 
Since my last envoi I have travelled about more than at any time 
previously, and I believe that in this collection you will find absolutely 
nothing common. In May, the middle of the wet season, not a tree 
was to be seen in flower in the forest, or capoeiras, but I found that at 
that season precisely the twiners of the Gapó began to flower; and the 
south shore of the river and the inundated angle between the Solimoés 
and the Rio Negro was soon quite gay with Serjanie, Asclepiadee, ete. 
The trees of the Gapé do not flower until the water begins to leave 
them. In this month too I went down to the mouth of the Rio Negro 
(about eight miles below the Barra) and remained there four days. I 
found it such an excellent station that I resolved to revisit it later in 
the season. I met there also an Indian carpenter whom I engaged to 
construct the cabin (olda) of my canoe, and in the month of July I 
took her down there and remained until the cabin was completed. 
There is an extraordinary difference in the vegetation of the opposite 
shores of the Amazon, at the junction of the Rio Negro and Solimoés. 
You will find in the collection some plants marked “ Mouth of R. 
Negro,” and others “Mouth of Solimoés”: the former plants are laved 
by black water, and the latter by white. Any one at first sight would 
take the Amazon to be the continuation of the Rio Negro, from the 
breadth and direction of the latter; but this cannot at all compare with — — 
the Solimoës for depth of stream and rapidity of current. It may be 
long before any one exposes himself again to gather the few plants I 
got at the mouth of the Solimoés—such a place for snakes and ants in 
the trees I never met with. In the wet season every terricolous animal 
must betake itself to the trees, where thousands of miles of forest are 
inundated. Among plants from the forests at the mouth of the Rio ` 
Negro, none interested me more than the Cajá-assá, à tree I had heard 
spoken of throughout. the Amazon, but could never fall in with pre- 
viously. It is apparently a true Anacardium, but grows ninety feet high! 
In the month of June I had an excursion up the Solimoés, my desti- — 
