34 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTMBUTION OF TUE PALMS. 



saves itself from falling by its prehensile tail. 

 In the month of January, the stems of ihepalma 

 real, our oreodoxa resia, were covered "with 

 snow-white blossoms in all the most frequented 

 thoroughfares of the llavannah, and in the 

 immediate vicinity of the city, but although wc 

 offered, for several days running, a couple of 

 pistoles to every negro boy we met in the 

 streets of Kegla and Guanavacoa for a single 

 spadix of the hermaphrodite blossoms, it Avas 

 in vain, for in the tropics no free man Avill 

 ever undertake any labour attended by fatigue, 

 unless he is compelled to do so by imperative 

 necessity. The botanists and painters of the 

 Eoyal Spanish Commission of Natural History, 

 under count Don Jaruco y Mopox, confessed 

 to us, that for several years they had been 

 tinable to examine these blossoms, owing to 

 the absolute impossibility of obtaining them. 

 After this statement of the difficulties atteudinir 

 their acquisition, the fact of our only being able, 

 in the course of two years, to describe twelve 

 species of palms, though we liad discovered 

 twenty species, may be understood, Imt I confess 

 it would hardly have becu credible to me before 

 1 left Europe." 



