Jiivias. 275 



neatly dove-tailing, and the entire mass forming a sphere. 

 There are generally, in all, about eighteen to twenty-four. 

 When ripe, the capsules drop from the trees, and are 

 collected in heaps by the natives, who call themselves 

 castanheiros, and with whom the annual gathering is like 

 the harvest of corn-countries or the vintage of the wine- 

 lands. They often tell of the dangers they run of a 

 fractured skull through the unlooked-for descent of one 

 of these vegetable aerolites. Laet, in a geographical 

 work published in 1633, in which the first mention of this 

 fruit appears, says that when the falling is thick and fast, 

 the men protect their heads with a sort of wooden helmet. 

 The pericarps being intensely hard require to be broken 

 open with an axe; the seeds are then despatched by 

 canoe to Para" (the chief city or port of the Amazon, 

 seventy or eighty miles up the stream), and thence they 

 eventually get transmitted to Europe and the United 

 States. The entire cargo of vessels of considerable 

 burthen often consists wholly of juvias. The annual 

 import into our own country is about six hundred and fifty 

 tons. The kernel of the juvia is a very wholesome one. 

 When fresh, it is as good as the best Jordan almond, and 

 may be partaken of, in moderation, by the most delicate. 

 Nothing in nature gives a better idea of the energy of 

 vegetable life in the tropics than is supplied by these 

 wonderful capsules, often casually imported with the 

 nuts. In fifty or sixty days a shell is formed harder 

 than the hardest timber ever produced in temperate 

 countries in years. 



