THE YRIARTEAS. 



161 



splendid Cucurito adorns the granite rocks in the rapids of 

 the Orinoco at Atures.- The fronds, which are but few in 

 number, rise almost perpendicularly sixteen feet high, from the 

 top of the lofty columnar shaft, and their feathery leaflets of 

 a thin and grass-like texture play lightly round the tall leaf- 

 stalks, slowly bending in the breeze. In the palms with a 

 feathery foliage, the leaf-stalks rise either immediately from 

 a brown ligneous trunk (cocoa-nut, date), or, as in the beau- 

 tiful Palma Real of the Havana, from a smooth, slender, and 

 grass-green shaft, placed like an additional column upon the 

 dark-coloured trunk. In the fan-palms, 

 the crown frequently rests upon a layer 

 of dried leaves, which impart a severe 

 character to the tree. 



The form of the trunk also varies 

 greatly ; sometimes it is extremely short, 

 as in ChanKuropshumills', and sometimes, 

 as in the ratans, assumes a bush-rope ap- 

 pearance. In some species it is smooth 



and unarmed, in other: 



rugged 



YRIARTEA VENTRICOSA. 



bristling with spines. In the American 

 Yriarteas it rests upon a number of roots 

 rising above the ground. Thus the V. 

 exorrhiza, frequently stands upon a dozen 

 or more supports, embracing a circum- 

 ference of twenty feet ; and the Y, ventri- 

 cosa is still more curious, as the spindle-shaped trunk, which 

 at both ends is scarce a foot thick, swells in the middle to a 

 threefold diameter, and, from its convenient form, is frequently 

 used by the Indians for the construction of their canoes. 



The form and colour of the fruits is also extremely various. 

 What a difference between the large double nuts of the Lo- 

 doicea and the date — between the egg-shaped fruits of the 

 Mauritia, whose scalj rind gives them the appearance of fir- 

 cones, and the gold and purple peaches of the Pirijao, hanging 

 in colossal clusters of sixty or eighty from the summit of the 

 majestic trunk. 



The family of the ferns is spread over the whole earth, but 

 chiefly abounds in the vicinity of the tropics. Most of these 

 plants love the shady and damp ground of the primitive forest, 



M 



