PREFACE. 



1 HE materials for this work were collected during my 

 travels on the Amazon and its tributaries from 1848 to 

 1852. Though principally occupied with the varied 

 and interesting animal productions of the country, I yet 

 found time to examine and admire the wonders of 

 vegetable life which everywhere abounded. In the vast 

 forests of the Amazon valley, tropical vegetation is to 

 be seen in all its luxuriance. Huge trees with but- 

 tressed stems, tangled climbers of fantastic forms, and 

 strange parasitical plants everywhere meet the admiring 

 gaze of the naturalist fresh from the meadows and 

 heaths of Europe. Everywhere too rise the graceful 

 Palms, true denizens of the tropics, of which they are 



