500 The Andes and the Amazons. 



Rose-wood exhibits large elongated zones of black irregu- 

 lar lines on a reddish-brown ground of various tints and 

 high lustre. The grain varies from coarse to fine. It is 

 limited to the Lower Amazons and to Eastern Brazil. The 

 Jacaranda branco of Southern Brazil is quite another 

 wood — white, knotty, light, and fragile (the Platypodium 

 elegans). 



Samauma, or Eriodendron, another monarch of the for- 

 est, having a lofty, dome-shaped crown, and rarely putting 

 forth a branch until it has overtopped all the trees around. 

 It has been found '200 feet high. The timber, however, is 

 not of prime quality. It is most abundant on the Lower 

 Amazons. 



JuTAHi, or Jetahy, " Copal- wood." — This also is a pa- 

 triarch of the forest, from 150 to 180 feet high, with a 

 gigantic trunk, sometimes sixty feet around and supported 

 by huge buttresses. Generally, however, the trunk is forty 

 feet long and three or four feet in diameter. The bark 

 resembles that of the English Oak. It is a Hymencea, 

 bearing two specific names, Mirabilis and Martianna ; 

 probably not the H. Courbaril, or "West Indian Locust- 

 tree. There are two kinds: the high yields copal; the 

 low has a poisonous juice. The wood is dark-colored, and 

 intensely hard, tough, and dense. It is used for rollers 

 and cogs in sugar- mills, for beams and planks in heavy 

 engine-work, and for treenails in planking vessels. It oc- 

 curs throughout the valley. 



MAgAEANDi^BA, or " Cow - tree." — This wonderful tree, 

 one of the largest of the forest monarchs, is the Mimusops 

 elata, belonging, therefore, to the same order and genus as 

 the Moira-pirauga.* It stands from 180 to 200 feet high 

 and 20 feet in circumference, crowned with a vast dome of 



* On page 288, the Ma9aranduba is confounded with the Palo de Vaca, 

 which is an Artocarpad. The "Cow-tree" of Guiana is a Galactodendron. 



