356 DIFFICULTIES IN HEBBORIZATIOH. 



calophyllum from seven to eight inches long, the Amyrw 

 earana, and the mani. All these trees (with the exception 

 of our new genus Retiniphyllum) were more than one hun- 

 dred or one hundred and ten feet high. As their trunks 

 throw out branches only toward the summit, we had some 

 trouble in procuring both leaves and flowers. The latter 

 were frequently strewed upon the ground at the foot of the 

 trees; but, the plants of different families being grouped 

 together in these forests, and every tree being covered with 

 lianas, we could not, with any degree of confidence, rely on 

 the authority of the natives, when they assured us that a 

 flower belonged to such or such a tree. Amid these riches of 

 nature heborizations caused us more chagrin than satis- 

 faction. "What we could gather appeared to us of little 

 interest, compared to what we could not reach. It rained 

 unceasingly during several months, and M. Bonpland lost 

 the greater part of the specimens which he had been com- 

 pelled to dry by artificial heat. Our Indians distinguished 

 %e leaves better than the corollsa or the fruit. Occupied 

 ji seeking timber for canoes, they are inattentive to 

 flowers. "All those great trees bear neither flowers nor 

 fruits," they repeated unceasingly. Like the botanists of 

 antiquity, they denied what they had not taken the 

 trouble to observe. They were tired with our questions, and 

 exhausted our patience in return. 



We have already mentioned that the same chemical pro- 

 perties being sometimes found in the same organs of dif- 

 ferent families of plants, these families supply each other's 

 places in various climates. Several species of palms* furnish 

 the inhabitants of equinoctial America and Africa with the 

 oil which we derive from the olive. "What the coniferse are 

 to the temperate zone, the terebinthacese and the guttiferae 

 are to the torrid. In the forests of those burning climates, 



* I.u Africa, the elais or maba; in America the cocoa-tree. In the 

 cocoa-tree it is the perisperm ; and in the elais (as in the olive, and the 

 oleinese iu general) it is the sarcocarp, or the pulp of the pericarp, that 

 yields oil. This difference, observed in the same family, appears to me 

 very remarkable, though it is in no way contradictory to the results 

 obtained by De Candolle in his ingenious researches on the chemical pro- 

 perties of plants. If our Alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus Elais, (a 

 Hrown, with great reason believes,) it follows, that in the same genus tht 

 oil is found in the sarcocarp and in the perisperm. 



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