COW-TREE. 181 
branous layers, which are elastic, and in five or six 
days become sour, and afterwards putrefy. 
The cow-tree appears to be peculiar to the litto- 
ral cordillera, and occurs most plentifully between 
Barbula and the Lake of Maracaybo. 
“ Among the many curious phenomena,” says 
Humboldt, “ which presented themselves to me in 
the course of my travels, I confess there were few 
by which my imagination was so powerfully affected 
as the cow-tree. All that relates to milk and to the 
cereal plants inspires us with an interest, which is not 
merely that of the physical knowledge of things, but. 
which connects itself with another order of ideas and 
feelings. We can hardly imagine how the human spe- 
cies could exist without farinaceous substances, and 
without the nutritious fluid which the breast of the 
mother contains, and which is appropriated to the 
condition of the feeble infant. The amylaceous mat- 
ter of the cereal plants,—the object of religious ve- 
neration among so many ancient and modern na- 
tions,—is distributed in the seeds, and deposited in 
the roots of vegetables ; while the milk which we 
use as food appears exclusively the product of ani- 
mal organization. Such are the impressions which 
we receive in early childhood, and such is the source 
of the astonishment with which we are seized on 
first seeing the cow-tree. Magnificent forests, ma- 
jestic rivers, and lofty mountains clad in perennial 
snows, are not the objects which we here admire. 
A few drops of a vegetable fluid impress us with an 
idea of the power and fecundity of nature. On the 
parched side of a rock grows a tree with dry and 
leathery foliage, its large woody roots scarcely pene- 
trating into the ground. For several months in the 
