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Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



MEETING OF NO VEMBER 4. 

 Vice-President Harper in the Chair. 



The following paper was read and referred to the Publishing Committee : 



ON PALM TREES. 

 By Jas. W. Abert. 



While reading recently about the palm trees of South America, I met 

 with the following statements:* 



" In Chili, every year in early spring (which occurs in August) very 

 many palm trees are cut down, and when the trunk is lying on the ground, 

 the crown of leaves is cut off. 



"The sap then immediately begins to flow from the upper end, and con- 

 tinues so doing for many months; it is necessary, however, that a thin 

 slice should be shaved off from that end every morning, so as to expose a 

 fresh surface. 



"A good tree will give ninety gallons, and all this must have been con- 

 tained in the vessels of the apparently dry trunk. 



"It is said that the sap flows much more quickly on those days when 

 the sun is powerful ; and, likewise, that it is absolutely necessary to take 

 care in cutting down the tree that it should fall with the head upward on 

 the side of the hill; for if it falls down the slope (i. e., with the butt end 

 higher than the crown), scarcely any sap will flow, although in that posi- 

 tion one would have thought that the action would have been aided, 

 instead of checked, by the force of gravity. The sap is concentrated by 

 boiling, and is then called treacle, which it very much resembles." 



It has often occurred to me that the experiment might be tried with our 

 sugar maples, in regard to the more bountiful flow of sap, when the posi- 

 tion of the tree most conforms to its growing position in nature. 



It seems strange that a tree, after its connection is severed with its 

 roots, should still be capable of yielding ninety gallons of sap. If the 

 tree in itself contained ninety gallons of sap, I should think that that 

 amount could be obtained, whether the crown or the butt end lay upper- 

 most. It would seem that the tree still continued to manufacture sap. 



Palms are particularly interesting as conspicuous types of monocotyle- 

 donous and endogenous plants. They are trimerous; the dominant number 

 which characterizes them is three, or multiples of three. Their leaves 

 are pinnate, as in the cocoanut tree; or flabelliform, as in the palm-leaf 



• Charles Darwin's "Naturalist's Voyage Round the World." 



