174 TRANSACTIONS AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE [Sess. lv. 



they exhibit great variety both in form and in size, but 

 every one is noteworthy and beautiful of its kind. On first 

 acquaintance the general family resemblance among the 

 several groups renders them ditticult to recognise as distinct, 

 and I had to tax the patience of my companion by constantly 

 confounding them, and asking him to set me right; but in a 

 very little time one gets to know them at a glance, and to 

 perceive that each is perfectly distinct in habit and appear- 

 ance. To see palms growing in perfection had been a long 

 clierished dream, and it was now realised to the full. The 

 first one that caught my eye on tliat particular creek was, I 

 remember well, the Manicole {Euterpe cdulis). It is a very 

 slender palm, 40 to 50 feet high, having a perfectly clean, 

 bare stem with hardly any taper in it, its girth in the middle 

 being only 18 inches, surmounted by a crown of pinnate 

 leaves, 7 feet in length. It is a peculiarly graceful tree, the 

 lady among palms, suggesting delicacy and refinement and 

 gentleness, partly by its general appearance, and partly by 

 the fact that from the thinness of its stem in proportion to 

 its height it cannot stand quite erect, but bends over in its 

 upper portion in a sliglit curve. Its leaflets are of thin 

 substance, and are set in motion by the faintest breath of air, 

 giving to the crown a characteristic shimmering appearance. 

 It is not a grand or stately or majestic tree, but of unsur- 

 passable airiness and lightness and elegance, fit to hold a 

 place in the foremost rank of South American palms. 



Presently another palm is caught sight of, and at once 

 claims attention, the Tooroo, as the native tribe of Arawaks 

 call it, CEnocarpus Batawa, which is frequent along the same 

 creek, but is not nearly so common as the Manicole. It is a 

 somewhat sturdy, erect tree, 40 feet high, with an elegant 

 crown of pinnate leaves of a dark, almost brownish-green 

 colour, and very easy to recognise at a distance after it is 

 once known. But one has little time to study its special 

 appearance at the moment, for, as one is carried on under 

 the swift strokes of the Indian paddles, his gaze is arrested 

 by what is evidently a different j^alni from either of the other 

 two, also pinnate-leaved, like almost all the Guiana palms, 

 but witli leaflets cut off short at the extremity instead of 

 coming gradually to a point, and with the straight edge 

 deeply serrate. This is the Booba {Sucratea exorrhiza), of 



