306 MR. SPRUCE’S BOTANICAL EXCURSION 
when they were toiling uuder a hot sun they rather liked a stoppage 
now and then. Towards the end of the voyage they got into the habit 
of peering into the trees as we went along in the hot afternoons, and 
would call out to me—busy among my papers in the cabin—“ O 
patrad! aikué potéra poranga” (“ Patron! here's a pretty flower "). 
I of course turned out to see if it was anything new, as it often proved 
to be. 
Lecythides were very numerous, and I had not time either to gather 
or preserve all I saw. I hoped to get some of them here in fruit, but 
I cannot see a single Lecythis in the Gapó of the falls. 
The Leguminose, nos. 1801, 1891, and 1937, were frequent nearly 
all the way up, and I saw forms which I could not tell towhich of 
these they should be referred. If I had been walking on a mountain- 
side it would have been easy to have gathered a specimen or two of 
these apparently intermediate forms, but when a large canoe had to be 
stopped, and a tree to be climbed or cut down for this purpose, involy- 
ing a considerable waste of time, I felt it was not worth the trouble. 
The Dicorynia, 1918, was frequent and very ornamental, from à 
little below Barcellos nearly to the base of the falls. About the falls 
its place is supplied by another Cæsalpineous tree (2077), which I 
gathered in flower, and hope to get also with ripe fruit. 
Shortly after I reached here my montaria broke from its moorings 
one night, and went over the falls. I sent my two men in quest of 
it: they were out all night, and returned next day with the montaria, 
which an honest Indian had found, almost uninjured, wedged between 
two rocks; they brought me also a branch of a tree in flower, which 
proved to be a small-leaved Dicorynia. Three or four days afterwards 
. Y went down the falls to get more of it, but the flowers were nearly all 
gone, and, strange to say, we could find only that one tree from which 
_ the men had plucked the branch. 
Gustavias were tolerably frequent, but possibly all reducible to one 
species. It was scarcely possible to preserve their flowers, on account 
of the number of caterpillars bred in them, 
It would surprise most people to be told that Proteacee are so nu- 
merous on the shores of the Rio Negro (in individuals, not in species) 
as to give a marked character to the vegetation. T am acquainted with 
three or four Proteacee (Andriopetaia) of the terra firma, but I have 
never been able to find them in flower or fruit. All that I have 
