COHUNE-RIDGE. 59 



bordering river valleys, or occupying extensive tracts or basins, 

 as in the west and south, or at the heads of some of the river- 

 systems. Geologically speaking, a " cohune-ridge " has been 

 formed by a river valley, or depression in the quartzy ground- 

 floor of the country, being, in process of time, filled up by large 

 deposits of fine alluvium and vegetable debris brought down 

 from the interior by means of rivers. Hence a cohune-ridge 

 soil is deep, rich, and very abundantly supplied with nitrogenous 

 compounds, affording. splendid food for plants. 



As its name indicates, a cohune-ridge has, as its characteristic 

 plant, the noble cohune-palm (Attalea cohune), which is one of 

 the noblest members of the palm family. In a cohune-ridge this 

 palm, in different stages of its growth, forms probably 20, and in 

 some cases 30, per cent, of the vegetation, the remainder being 

 composed either of mahogany, cedar, rosewood, sapodilla, Santa 

 Maria, the smaller palms, or shade-loving trees. The cohune- 

 palm, especially before it has formed a stem, has a magnificent 

 spread with its large pinnate leaves, sometimes covering an area 

 fully a hundred feet in diameter. In the neighbourhood of 

 Tiger Eun, near the public road, where there was an open 

 sheltered spot, a frond of this palm was estimated to be 60 feet 

 long and 8 feet in breadth. After the stem is formed the fronds 

 become much smaller, and when the palm has attained a height, 

 as many do, of 50 or 60 feet, the fronds are apparently not 

 larger than those of the oil palm (Elceis guineensis). 



The cohune bears a nut growing in large bunches, and pro- 

 duced annually, some 2 J feet long, hanging down from near the 

 bases of the leaves like huge clusters of grapes reminding one 

 of the old sacred representations of the ponderous clusters from 

 the Promised Land carried by the Hebrew spies. Each nut is 

 of the size and shape of a pheasant's egg, covered on the outside 

 by a thin layer of fibrous husk, and composed internally of a 



