STATELY PALM-TREES. 257 



jaqua, and vadgiai, each of which forms a separate group. 

 The mwrichi, or mauritia with scaly fruits, is the celebrated 

 sago-tree of the G-uaraon Indians. It lias palmate leaves, 

 and has no relation to the palm-trees with pinnate and 

 curled leaves ; to ihejagua, which appears to be a species of 

 the cocoa-tree ; or to the vadgiat or cucurito, which may be 

 assimilated to the fine species Oreodoxa. The cucurito, 

 which is the palm most prevalent around the cataracts of 

 the Atures and Maypures, is remarkable for its stateliness. 

 Its leaves, or rather its palms, crown a trunk of eighty or 

 one hundred feet high ; their direction is almost perpen- 

 dicular when young, as well as at their full growth, the 

 points only being incurvated. They look like plumes of the 

 most soft and verdant green. The cucurito, the pirijao, the 

 fruit of which resembles the apricot, the Oreodoxa regia or 

 valma real of the island of Cuba, and the ceroxylon of the 

 high Andes, are the most majestic of all the palm-trees we 

 <saw in the New World. As we advance toward the tem- 

 perate zone, the plants of this family decrease in size and 

 beauty. What a difference between the species we have just 

 mentioned, and the date-tree of the East, which unfor- 

 tunately has become to the landscape painters of Europe the 

 type of a group of palm-trees ! 



It is not suprising that persons who have travelled only 

 in the north of Africa, in Sicily, or in Spain, cannot conceive 

 that, of all large trees, the palm is the most grand and beau- 

 tiful in form. Incomplete analogies prevent Europeans from 

 having a just idea of the aspect of the torrid zone. All the 

 world knows, for instance, that this zone is embellished by 

 the contrasts exhibited in the foliage of the trees, and 

 particularly by the great number of those with pinnate 

 leaves. The ash, the service-tree, the inga, the acacia of the 

 United States, the gleditsia, the tamarind, the mimosa, the 

 desmanthus, have all pinnate leaves, with foliolsD more or 

 less long, slender, tough, and shining. But can a group of 

 ash-trees, of service-trees, or of sumach, recall the picturesque 

 effect of tamarinds or mimosas, when the azure of the sky 

 appears through their small, slender, and delicately pinnated 

 iravcs? These considerations are more important than they 

 may at first seem. The forms of plants determine the phy- 

 siognomy of nature ; and this physiognomy influences the 



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