332 THE ESTHETICS OF 



direction of the leaves. The parts of these, the leaflets, 

 are in some arranged close together on a flat surface, 

 like the teeth of a comb, with rigid cellular tissue, as in 

 the Cocoas and the Date ; hence the glorious reflection of 

 the sun from their upper surface, the green of which 

 in the shore-loving Cocoas is lively, in the Dates which 

 skirt the confines of the Desert, dull and ashy ; sometimes 

 the leaf looks like that of the Rushes, woven of more 

 tender and pliant elements and curled towards the apex. 

 The direction of the leaves, as well as the stem, gives 

 an expression of high majesty to the Palms. The more 

 centripetal, the more acute the angle which they make 

 with the stem above, the grander and more elevated is 

 the form. What different aspects afford the pendant 

 leaves of the Palma de Covija on the Orinoco, nay even 

 of Cocoas and Date-Palms, and the heavenward striving 

 shoots of the Jagua and Pirijao ! Nature has heaped 

 together all the Beauties of Form in the Jagua Palms, 

 which crown the granite rocks of the Cataracts of Atures 

 and Maypure. Their smooth slender stems rise from 

 sixty to seventy feet high, so that they project like a 

 colonnade above the thicket of deciduous trees. Their 

 aerial summits contrast strangely with the thickly-leaved 

 Ceibas, with the woods of Laurinea and Balsam-trees 

 which surround them. Their leaves, seldom more than 

 seven or eight, aspire almost vertically fourteen to sixteen 

 feet upwards. The points of the leaves are curled up 

 so as to resemble a bunch of feathers. The leaflets are 

 of a grass-like, delicate tissue, and flutter lightly and 

 airily about the slowly- waving leaf-stalk. In Palms with 

 feathered leaves, the leaf-stalks either spring from the dry, 

 rough, woody portion of the shaft, or from the rough por- 

 tion of the trunk projects a grass-green, smooth and more 



