1 82 MEDICINAL VIRTUE, ETC., OF TREES. 



beyond the fact of our becoming aware of the existence 

 of vast forests upon the upper waters of the Congo, 

 and its tributary streams, very little has been added 

 to our store of knowledge, so far as their vegetable 

 products are concerned. 



But who shall predict the possibilities of the future ? 

 It may well be that, as time goes on, future investi- 

 gations may prove (and as we trust, will prove) that 

 these forests enclose many trees and plants of great, and 

 hitherto unknown, medicinal virtues; as well as numer- 

 ous other treasures of the vegetable kingdom, which 

 from a commercial, as well as from a horticultural, 

 point of view, may perhaps prove as important to the 

 welfare of mankind, and as valuable in a pecuniary 

 sense, as any of the novelties heretofore introduced to 

 the world from the Central and South American forests. 

 We purpose presently to offer a few remarks with 

 respect to a few of the principal of these botanical 

 treasures of the western hemisphere: whose value, 

 as we believe, is even yet but little appreciated at its 

 true worth, by the general public. 



From the fact of there being so little variation in 

 the seasons, and the almost exclusively evergreen 

 nature of the trees, the general aspect of forests truly 

 equatorial in their character, as we have said, exhibits 

 but little change at any period of the year. The 

 traveller is also almost always disappointed, on his first 

 arrival, by the apparent scarcity of brilliant flowers, 

 and the few visible signs of animal life not that 

 there really is any scarcity of either the one or the 

 other; but rather that these things are, so to speak, 

 swallowed up in the vast extent of impenetrable thicket, 

 which rises before one on every side like a living 



