48 MILK OF THE COW-TREE. 



the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc 5 

 but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putre- 

 faction as gelatine. The people call the coagulum that 

 separates by the contact of the air, cheese. This coagulum 

 grows sour in the space of five or six days, as I observed in 

 the small portions which I carried to Nueva Valencia. The 

 milk contained in a stopped phial, had deposited a little 

 coagulum ; and, far from becoming fetid, it exhaled con- 

 stantly a balsamic odour. The fresh juice mixed with cold 

 water was scarcely coagulated at all ; but on the contact of 

 nitric acid the separation of the viscous membranes took 

 place. We sent two bottles of this milk to M. Fourcroy at 

 Paris : in one it was in its natural state, and in the other, 

 mixed with a certain quantity of carbonate of soda. The 

 French consul residing in the island of St. Thomas, under- 

 took to convey them to him. 



The extraordinary tree of which we have been speaking 

 appears to be peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, par- 

 ticularly from Barbula to the lake of Maracaybo. Some 

 stocks of it exist near the village of San Mateo ; and, ac- 

 cording to M. Bredemeyer, whose travels have so much 

 enriched the fine conservatories of Schonbrunn and Vienna, 

 in the valley of Caucagua, three days journey east of Caracas. 

 This naturalist found, like us, that the vegetable milk of the 

 palo de vaca had an agreeable taste and an aromatic smell. 

 At Caucagua, the natives call the tree that furnishes this 

 nourishing juice, 'the milk-tree' (arbol del leche). They 

 profess to recognize, from the thickness and colour of the 

 foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice ; as the herds- 

 man distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch-cow. 

 Is r o botanist has hitherto known the existence of this plant. 

 It seems, according to M. Kunth, to belong to the sapota 

 family. Long after my return to Europe, I found in the 

 Description of the East Indies by Laet, a Dutch traveller, 

 a passage that seems to have some relation to the cow-tree. 

 "There exist trees," says Laet,* "in the province of Cu- 



* " Inter arbores quse sponte hie passim nascuntur, memorantur a 

 scriptoribus Hispanis qusedam quse lacteum quemdam liquorem fundunt, 

 qui durus admodum evadit instar gummi, et suavem odorem de se fundit ; 

 aliee quse liquorem quemdam edunt, instar lactis coagulati, qui in cibis ab 

 ipsis usurpatur sine noxa." (Among the trees growing here, it ifl re 



