548 The Andes and the Amazons. 



Indians, on wliicli, said Humboldt, " Nature has lavished 

 every beauty of form." The smooth, annulated, slender 

 stem I'ises between twenty and forty feet, and its leaves, 

 about six in number and over thirty feet long, spring al- 

 most verticall}' into the air, but arch over at the ends. 

 The pinnae are arranged verticaUy, not horizontally, as in 

 other Palms, and number some 200 pairs in a single leaf. 

 A. excelsa, Mart., or " Urucuri," common every where, save 

 on the Maranon, has a smooth, columnar stem, forty or fif- 

 ty feet high, and broad leaves with symmetrical, rigid leaf- 

 lets. The fruit, about the size and shape of a butternut, 

 has a pleasant, jnicy pulp, but is not eaten. The fruit is 

 burned for smoking rubber. A. spectdbilis, Mart., or " Cu- 

 rua," found on the sandy campos of the Tapajos and Ne- 

 gro, is a stemless Palm with broad, flat, I'igid pinnse. The 

 leaves, twenty feet long, rise directly from the ground. 

 The fruit contains milk similar to that of the cocoa-nut. 

 A. speciosa, Mart., or " Uauassii," is a noble Palm with 

 gigantic leaves growing on the Madeira, Negro, and Soli- 

 moeus. 



AcKocoMiA lasiospatJia, or "Mucuja," grows only on the 

 main-land of the Lower Amazons. It is forty feet high, 

 and its fruit contains an edible, yellowish, fatty pulp. A. 

 sclerocarpa, also called "Mucuja," is not uncommon in cul- 

 tivated places from Para to Santarem. It is a prickly spe- 

 cies with edible but dryish drupes. 



Cocos nucifera, L.,the common "Cocoa-nut," is limited 

 to the Atlantic end of the Amazons, and must be culti- 

 vated. It may be grown at Manaos and farther inland, 

 but will not fruit. Even at Santarem, according to our 

 experience, the nuts lack the sweetness of those nearer the 

 sea. The stem is about forty feet high, and invariably 

 inclined. In germination, the ovule sprouts through the 

 softest of the three " eyes" at the butt of the nut. 



