Bibliographical Notices. 195 



us they have a mingled character of" strangeness and a sort of classical 

 grandeur. The frequent mention of palms in the Bihle, the marked 

 attraction they have exerted on all travellers, and the unusual and 

 peculiar forms revealed in the scanty and imperfect pictures which 

 until of late years were alone accessible, combined to invest them 

 with a peculiar, and in some degree mysterious interest. 



Until recently, the means which general readers had of forming 

 an idea of palms were scanty enough. The conventional date-palm 

 of oriental landscapes, repeated from copyist to copyist, and not at 

 the tirst-hand very much like the original ; the stock-group of cocoa- 

 nut palms in every tropical sketch, — these formed the type upon 

 which most readers built their conceptions of palms ; and, familiar 

 enough to travellers, they were only superficially known to any but 

 professed botanists. Even botanists do not date very far back their 

 knowledge of this family. Humboldt remarks, in his 'Ansichten 

 der Natur,' that only fifteen species were known at the time of 

 Linufeus's death. Martins' s great work on palms ; the labours of 

 our indefatigable Indian botanists, — that worthy band of naturalists 

 who have turned to such good account the rich opportunities opened 

 in the East India Company's service ; the travels of Humboldt and 

 Bonpland, and more recently of Wallace and others in America : 

 have wonderfully extended our knowledge of this family ; to which 

 public attention is continually drawn more strongly by the wonderful 

 variety and abundance of their oeconomic products. Cocoa-nuts, as 

 articles of commerce, are now rivalled by their husk, or coir : palm- 

 oil is not what it was twenty years ago, a salve, having a questionable 

 preference in the eyes of old-fashioned domestic "leeches," — but the 

 source of "enlightenment" for thousands, — not merely actually, but 

 figuratively, since the civilizing influence of the commerce in this 

 article appears to bid fair to lay the foundation of the taming of 

 the ^^•ild slaving nations of Africa. 



It would be difficult to name any vegetable material used in the 

 arts, or as a staple of food, which is not furnished by one or other of 

 the palms. Timber ; fibrous substances, coarse and fine, capable of 

 conversion into cordage, clothing, &c. ; nuts, hard and enduring enough 

 to serve as vessels for liquids, or to furnish substitutes for bone or 

 ivory ; starch, sugar, spirit, vinegar, succulent green vegetable food, 

 oils of various characters, wax, sweet fruits, nuts — all these are 

 yielded, sometimes several even by the same tree. Hence the family 

 is of the highest direct importance to the natives of the tropics, to 

 which regions it especially belongs, while commerce renders it indi- 

 rectly important, by converting it into a property for them, since they 

 can barter the raw products for the industrial products of civilized 

 nations. 



Mr. Wallace's interesting little work on the Palms of the Amazon 

 furnished a new set of ideas to the general reader, and Dr. Seemann's 

 ' Popular History of Palms ' is exceedingly well calculated to satisfy 

 the curiosity which ^Ir. Wallace's readers must have felt to know 

 more of these interesting plants. It is especially full in the matter of 

 the ceconomical products ; in fact, this is the strong point of the book, 



13* 



