Mertens and Koch's DeutschlaruTs Flora. 357 



The late king, Maximilian Joseph, it is well known, delighted to pa- 

 tronize every thing connected with the sciences and the fine arts, so that 

 Munich now boasts of possessing some of the noblest museums' in the 

 world. In our department, the aged and respectable Schrank deserves 

 to be first "mentioned, since to him the country is indebted for the state 

 of perfection to which the botanic garden has arrived, as well as for a 

 " Flora of Bavaria," and the " Plantce rariores Horti Monacensin," in 

 folio, with coloured plates executed in lithography. This art, which, be- 

 sides having been invented in Munich, is there carried, we believe, to its 

 highest degree of excellence, is nevertheless not well calculated to repre- 

 sent the more delicate forms, and especially the analysis of the parts of 

 fructification of plants. Such at least may be inferred from the figures of 

 the work in question ; but other botanical figures, which we shall now 

 mention, come much nearer to the effect of copper-plate engravings than 

 any we have yet seen. We mean the " Monographia Palmarum Brasilien- 

 sium," and the " Nova Genera et Species Plantarum in iiinere Brasiliensi," 

 &c. by Spix and Martins and Zuccarini. 



When the emperor of Austria sent naturalists to Brazil in the suite of 

 the princess of that family, the king of Bavaria appointed other two gen- 

 tlemen, Dr T. Bapt. von Spix and Dr C. F. Phil, von Martius, to go, 

 under the protection of the Austrian embassy, to explore the Brazilian ter- 

 ritories. They embarked at Trieste for Rio de Janeiro. From that capital 

 they went to St Paulo, Ypanema, Villa Rica, and the Coroados Indians on 

 the Rio Xipoto. Severe illness, induced by the climate and fatigue, com- 

 pelled them to rest for a time in the captaincy of Maranham, whence they 

 proceeded to the island of St Louis and Para. At the Amazon River they 

 had attained the chief object of their wishes; and setting out on the 21st 

 of August 1819, proceeded along the bank of the stream (amidst a chaos 

 of floating islands, falling masses of the banks, immense trunks of trees, 

 carried down by the current, the cries and screarasof countless multitudes of 

 monkeys and birds, shoals of turtles, crocodiles, and fish, gloomy forests full 

 of parasitic plants and palms, with tribes of wandering Indians on the banks 

 marked and disfigured in various manners, according to their fancies,) 

 till they reached the settlement of Panxis, where, at the distance of 500 

 miles up the country, the tide of the sea is still visible and the river, ex- 

 tending to the breadth of a quarter of a league, is of unfathomable depth. * 

 They then journeyed to the mouth of the Rio Negro. At the town of 

 Ega, on the Rio Zeffe, the two travellers separated Dr Martius pro- 

 ceeded up the Japura over rocks and cataracts, and at length arrived at 

 the foot of the mountain Arascoara, which is separated from Quito only by 

 the Cordilleras. Dr Spix continued by the main stream, and, passing- 

 through a country unhealthy in the extreme, abounding in savage men and 

 venomous insects, at length arrived at the mouth of the Jupary, on the 

 frontiers of Peru, when he heard the language of the Incas. They both 

 returned to Para in April 1820, after having traversed the continent of 



• Sec the first part of the interesting travels of these gentlemen, English Edition 

 2 vol?, flvo, p. xii. \ 



