LECYTHIDti. 113 



down on bare polished logs, wliicli floods had carried from 

 the hills above, and ate and drank for our Negros had by 

 now rejoined, us ; and then scrambled up the shore back 

 again, and into a trace running along the low cliff, even more 

 beautiful, if possible, than that which we had followed in the 

 morning. Along the cliff tall Balatas and Palmistes, with 

 here and there an equally tall Cedar, and on the inside bank 

 a green wall of Balisiers, with leaves full fifteen feet long 

 and heads of scarlet flowers, marked the richness of the soil. 

 Here and there, too, a Cannon-ball tree rose, grand and 

 strange, among the Balatas ; and in one place the ground w^as 

 strewn with large white flowers, whose peculiar shape told us 

 at once of some other Lecythid tree high overhead. These 

 Lecythids are peculiar to the hottest parts of South America ; 

 to the valleys of the Oroonoco and Amazon ; to Trinidad, as a 

 fragment of the old Oroonocquan land, and possibly to some of 

 the southern Antilles. So now, as we are in their home, it 

 may be worth our while to pause a little round these strange 

 and noble forms. 



Botanists tell us that they are, or rather may have been 

 in old times, akin to myrtles. If so, they have taken a 

 grand and original line of their own, and persevered in it for 

 ages, till they have specialized themselves to a condition far 

 in advance of most myrtles, in size, beauty, and use. They 

 may be known from all other trees by one mark their 



VOL. II. I 



