112 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



beaten in a mortar until they have the appearance and con- 

 sistence of pale butter. To receive this, a large cylindrical 

 basket is made of strips of the trunk of a palm and lined with 

 leaves. The basket is placed on a stage over a fire where it is 

 usual to put things that need to be kept dry, and there the 

 butter will keep good for two or three years. ''Jupuru butter" 

 is eaten with fish and game, being melted in the gravy along 

 with the fruits of various species of Capsicum, which consti- 

 tute an essential ingredient in the mohlo at every Brazilian 

 table, whether the guests be red of white. People who can 

 endure the vile smell, which is never lost, find the butter very 

 savory. 



The fruit of Persea gratissima, the "avocado" or "alli- 

 gator pear" of the English, or "palta" of the Peruvians, con- 

 tains a large amount of a firm, unctuous, oily pulp having ex- 

 actly the taste and appearance of yellow butter, and is fre- 

 quently called by the English residents of the West Indies 

 "midshipman's butter" or "subaltern's butter." It is usually 

 eaten with spice and lime juice or pepper and salt. An abund- 

 ance of oil useful for illuminating purposes and for soap mak- 

 ing is obtained from the pulp by expression. 



What is called by the French "beurre de mango," and by 

 the English "mango butter," is a fatty matter obtained from a 

 species of Mangifera of the order Anacardiancese. 



Finally, a substitute for butter is afiforded by the yellow- 

 ish fatty pulp contained in the edible fruit of the "mucuja 

 palm," a tree forty feet in height growing on the mainland of 

 the Lower Amazons. This oily pulp, which is eaten, is sold in 

 the markets throughout Brazil. — W. R. Gerard in Scientific 

 American. 



