RIO DE JANEIRO AND ITS ENVIRONS. 69 
The mountains along the road, as indeed throughout the 
neighborhood of Rio, are of very peculiar forms, steep and 
conical, suggesting at first sight a volcanic origin. It is this 
abruptness of outline which gives so much grandeur to 
mountain ranges here, the average height of which does 
not exceed two or three thousand feet. A closer examina- 
tion of their structure shows that their wild, fantastic forms 
are the result of the slow processes of disintegration, not 
of sudden convulsions. Indeed, the rocks here differ so 
much in external character from those of the Northern 
Hemisphere, that the European geologist stands at first 
bewildered before them, and feels that the work of his 
life is to be done over again. It is some time before he 
obtains a clew to the facts and brings them into harmony 
with his previous knowledge. Thus far Mr. Agassiz finds 
himself painfully perplexed by this new aspect of phenome- 
na so familiar to him in other regions, but so baffling here. 
are four essentially different forms among the palms : the tall ones, with a 
slender and erect stem, terminating with a crown of long feathery leaves, 
or with broad fan-shaped leaves ; the bushy ones, the leaves of which rise 
as it were in tufts from the ground, the stem remaining hidden under the 
foliage ; the brush-like ones, with a small stem, and a few rather large leaves ; 
and the winding, creeping, slender species. Their flowers and fruits are as 
varied as their stock. Some of these fruits may be compared to large woody 
nuts, with a fleshy mass inside; others have a scaly covering; others resemble 
peaches or apricots, while others still are like plums or grapes. Most' of them 
are eatable and rather pleasant to the taste. It is a thousand pities that so 
many of these majestic trees should have been deprived of their sonorous native 
names, to bear henceforth, in the annals of science, the names of some unknown 
princes, whom flattery alone could rescue from oblivion. The Innja has become 
a Maximiliana, the Jara a Leopoldinia, the Pupunha a Guilielma, the Pachiuba 
an Iriartea, the Carana a Mauritia. The changes from Indian to Greek names 
have not been more felicitous. I would certainly have preferred Jacitara to 
Desmonchus, Mucaja to Acrocomia, Baccaba to (Enocarpus, Tucuma to 
Astrocaryum. Even Euterpe for Assai is hardly an improvement. L. A. 
