THE BUTTEH TEEB. 55 



Whilst the polo de vaca manifests the immense fecundity 

 and the bounty of nature in the torrid zone, it also 

 reminds us of the numerous causes which favour in those 

 fine climates the careless indolence of man. Mungo Park 

 has made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M. De 

 Candolle suspects to be of the family of sapotas, as well as 

 our milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-tree, and the mauritia 

 of the Orinoco, are as much bread-trees as the rema of the 

 South Sea. The fruits of the crescentia and the lecythis 

 serve as vessels for containing food, while the spathes of the 

 palms, and the bark of trees, furnish caps and garments 

 without a seam. The knots, or rather the interior cells of 



Bouillon-Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Chimie, vol. xlvi, vol. li, 

 vol. Ixxix, vol. Ixxx, vol. Ixxxv, have pointed out a great quantity of al- 

 bumen in the substance of the Agaricus deliciosus, an edible mushroom. 

 It is this albumen contained in their juice which renders them so hard when 

 boiled. It has been proved that morels (Morchella esculenta) can be con- 

 verted into sebaceous and adipocerous matter, capable of being used in the 

 fabrication of soap. (De Candolle, sur les Proprietes medicinales des 

 Plantes.) Saccharine matter has also been found in mushrooms by Gun- 

 ther. It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli, 

 helvetise, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display themselves 

 in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with 

 most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles sugar, albumen, 

 adipocire, acetate of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, &c. 

 It would be interesting to examine, besides the milk of the lactescent 

 fungi, those species which, when cut in pieces, change their colour on the 

 contact of atmospheric air. 



Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas, 

 we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance to some plants of the 

 urticeous kind, especially to the fig-tree, because of its terminal stipulae 

 in the shape of a horn ; and to the brosimum, on account of the struc- 

 ture of its fruit. M. Kunth would even have preferred this last classifi- 

 cation ; if the description of the fruit, made on the spot, and the nature 

 of the milk, which is acrid in the urticese, and sweet in the sapotas, did 

 not seem to confirm our conjecture. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit, 

 and not the flower of * o^w .xee. He asserts that he observed [some- 

 times ?] two seeds, lying one against the other, as in the alligator pear- 

 tree (Laurus persea). Perhaps this botanist had the intention of ex- 

 pressing the same conformation of the nucleus that Swartz indicates in the 

 description of the brosimum : "nucleus bilobus aut bipartibilis." We 

 have mentioned the places where this remarkable tree grows : it will bd 

 easy for botanical travellers to procure the flower of the palo de vaca 

 and to remove the doubts which still remain, of the family to which 

 belongs. 



