in; THt: northern mountains. 



those " Brazil nuts " which are sold iu every sweet-shop at 

 home. They belong to Bertholletia excelsa, a tree which 

 grows sparingly I have never seen it wikl in the 

 southern part of the island, but plentifully in the forests 

 of Guiana, and which is said to be one of the tallest 

 of all the forest giants. The fruit, round like the cannon- 

 ball, and about the size of a twenty-four pounder, is 

 liarder than the hardest wood, and has to be battered to 

 pieces with the back of a hatchet to disclose the nuts, 

 which lie packed close inside. Any one who has ham- 

 mered at a Bertholletia fruit will be ready to believe the 

 stor}^ that the Indians, fond as they are of the nuts, avoid 

 the " totocke " trees till the fruit has all fallen, for fear 

 of fractured skulls ; and the older story which Humboldt 

 gives out of old Laet,^ that the Indians dared not enter the 

 forests, when the trees were fruiting, without having their 

 heads and shoulders covered with bucklers of hard wood. 

 These "Almendras de Peru," Peru almonds, as they were 

 called, were known in Europe as early as the sixteenth 

 century, the seeds being carried up the Maragnon, and by 

 the Cordilleras to Peru, men knew not from whence. To 

 Humboldt himself, I believe, is due the re-discovery of 

 the tree itself and its enormous fruit; and the name of 

 Bertholletia excelsa was given by him. The ti-ee, he says, 



^ " Personal Xariative," vol. v. p. 537. 



