OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 465 



tile spadix the large flowers are crowded upon the short stout branches 

 (three inches long), the cuspidate petals fifteen lines long, little exceed- 

 ing the sepals ; ovary pubescent, three-celled, more than half covered 

 by the jiubesceut campanulate or suburceolate disk (five lines deep). 

 The fruiting spadix is loaded with five to eight hundred or more nuts, 

 which are elliptic-ovate, and two and a half inches long, not including 

 the broadly conical beak. The thick bony endocarp encloses usually 

 a single seed, sometimes two or rarely three. There can be little doubt 

 that this palm is the Gocos lapidea of Gaertner (Fruct. 1. 16, t. 6, f. 1), 

 at least as collected by Karwinsky between Oaxaca and Zacatepec, and 

 described by Martins in Palm. Orbign. 104, and Hist. Palm. 3. 290, 

 t. 167, f. vii. 



AcROCOMiA YiNiFERA, Oersted. A handsome palm, twenty to 

 thirty feet high or more, very frequent in the forests of the Motagua 

 valley near Quirigua. A single tree was seen near Yzabal, from which 

 specimens were secured. The stem is cylindrical, erect, armed with 

 erect black rigid flattened spines (two to six inches long), and covered 

 above by the sheathing bases of dead persistent leaves. The long 

 pinnate leaves have the leaflets arranged in two ranks on each side of 

 the rhachis, and are dark green and shining above, and glaucous and 

 villous beneath. The spatlxes are numerous among the leaves, about 

 four feet long and three or four inches in diameter, very densely fus- 

 cous-setose and armed with scattered pubescent spines (an inch or two 

 long, or less), and terminating in a slender beak (four inches long). 

 The branches of the spadix are stout at base, bearing six to ten pistil- 

 late flowers, the more slender upper portion staminate, with the alveolaa 

 ciliate-tufted at the angles : ovary and young fruit densely covered 

 with dark brown appressed pubescence ; mature fruit glabrous, sub- 

 depressed-globose, nearly two inches in diameter, the nut an inch in 

 diameter. The species is clearly distinct from A. sclerocarpa, but it 

 may be the same as A. Mexicana, Mart., which is known only from 

 Karwinsky's brief description and the figure reproduced by INIartius 

 (Hist. Palm. 3. 285, t. 138). At Yzabal it is known as " Coyol," the 

 same name which Oersted (who alone has collected it) found given to 

 it on the western side of Nicaragua and in Costa Rica. 



Manicaria Plukenetii, Griseb. «fe Wendl. ? This is a common 

 palm in the densely wooded low grounds along the sca-^hore near 

 Livingston. As seen there the trunk is usually ten or fifteen feet 

 high, and about six inches in diameter, covered with the bases of dead 

 leaves ; rarely thirty feet high, but less than a foot in diameter, the 

 lower part of the trunk naked and very deeply scarred. They often 



VOL. XXI. (N. S. XIII.) 30 



