166 BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



saw ; but none seemed to be more delighted with 

 our visit than the old gardener. He perceived 

 how well she could appreciate his difficulties and 

 his success ; and he listened with the greatest at- 

 tention to air her remarks. Miss P., however, 

 did not forget the circumstance that led to our 

 visit, and she shewed us in several different palms, 

 that the scales of the foot-stalks completely 

 sheath the stem ; and that after the decay of the 

 leaf they form an entire ring, which has a very 

 different appearance from the separate marks or 

 cicatrices left by the fronds of the fern. 



She had never seen so fine a collection of 

 palms in this country; and she told us many cir- 

 cumstances of their history and habits. She 

 made us observe, that in the leaves the fibres 

 run parallel to the edges. There are two grand 

 forms to which the leaves may all be referred ; 

 pinnated, as in the cocoa and date ; and fan- 

 shaped, as in the dwarf and fan-palms. In the 

 dwarf which we examined, the breadth of the leaf 

 is considerable, but from the direction of the 

 fibres, and the manner in which it is folded, pre- 

 vious to developement, it may rather be regarded 

 as composed of several leaves. 



The flowers of palms are even more numerous 

 than I thought, though I remember, at Rio, try- 

 ing in vain to count those of the alfonsia amyy- 

 dalina it would have been a hopeless work, for 

 Miss P. says one spathe sometimes contains sixty 

 thousand. 



