4.:2 ABUSDANSE OF THE FITTS. 



among the monocotyledons, and the berthoiletia and the 

 lecythis among the dicotyledons. In our climates only the 

 cucurbitaceaB produce in the space of a few months fruits of 

 an extraordinary size ; but these fruits are pulpy and suc- 

 culent. Within the tropics, the berthoiletia forms in less 

 than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of 

 which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw 

 with the sharpest instruments. A great naturalist has 

 observed, that the wood of fruits attains in general a hard- 

 ness which is scarcely to be found in the wood of the trunks 

 of trees. The pericarp of the berthoiletia has traces of four 

 cells, and I have sometimes found even five. The seeds 

 have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance 

 renders the structure of the fruit more complicated than in 

 the lecythis, the peTcea or caryocar, and the saouvari. The 

 first tegument is osseous or ligneous, triangular, tubercu- 

 lated on its exterior surface, and of the colour of cinnamon. 

 Four or five, and sometimes eight of these triangular nuts, 

 are attached to a central partition. As they are loosened 

 in time, they move freely in the large spherical pericarp. 

 The capuchin monkeys (Simia chiropotes) are singularly 

 fond of the Brazil nuts ; and the noise made by the seeds, 

 when the fruit is shaken as it falls from the tree, excites the 

 appetites of these animals in the highest degree. I have 

 most frequently found only from fifteen to twenty-two nuts 

 in each fruit. The second tegument of the almonds is 

 membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow. Their taste is 

 extremely agreeable when they are fresh ; but the oil, with 

 which they abound, and which is so useful in the art?- 

 becomes easily rancid. Although at the Upper Orinoco 

 we often ate considerable quantities of these almonds for 

 want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so 

 doing. The spherical pericarp of the berthoiletia, perforated 

 at the summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled 

 part of the columella forms (according to M. Kunth) a 

 sort of inner cover, as in the fruit of the leojthis, but it 

 seldom opens of itself. Many seeds, from the decompo- 

 sition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty 

 of germination before the rainy season, in which the lig- 

 neous integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of 

 Outrefaction. A tale is very current on the banks of the 



