60 PALMS OF AMERICA. 



trate the varied beauties of the tribe. They rise in 

 stately groups from the fissures of the granite 

 rocks at the cataracts of Maypure and Atures, on the 

 Orinoco ; their slender and polished stems attain to 

 the height of sixty or seventy feet, surmounted with 

 a canopy of enormous leaves, and yet so light are 

 they, and airy, that they rustle to every passing 

 breeze, and present in their playful quiver a striking 

 contrast to the deep dense mass of foliage far be- 

 neath, and of which scarcely a leaf is seen to stir. 

 This valuable species bear enormous clusters of 

 purple arid gold-coloured berries, which yield abun- 

 dance of farinaceous food, and are equally pleasant 

 and nutritious. Others there are, whose tall, un- 

 branched, and slender stems, crowned with elegant 

 and feathery foliage, give an impression of vegetable 

 youth, while beside them some gnarled and gigantic 

 tree may seem to indicate that long centuries must 

 have passed over its sapless trunk. But such may 

 not be the case ; many years are needful to perfect 

 some trees which yet retain the vigour and the 

 beauty of their first existence, while others speedily 

 decay. Even the stately Oak, and the stupendous 

 Baobabs, of Senegal, though they convey an idea of 

 great strength, combined with age, may begin to 

 fail in even a less period than the Palm. 



In the Oak and Ash, in the Chestnut and the 

 Beech, and generally among forest trees one charac- 

 ter pervades the different species. The broad 

 umbrageous foliage of the Oak, and its widely- 

 extended arms, its giant port, and club-shaped 

 leaves, are discoverable in no other species of forest 

 tree. The Ash, on the contrary, owes its light and 



