M 



cucurito, which may be assimilated to the fine 

 species oreodoxa. The cucurito, which is the 

 palm most prevalent around the cataracts of the 

 Atures and Maypures, is remarkable for it's 

 stateliness. It's leaves, or rather it's palms, 

 crown a trunk of eighty or one hundred feet 

 high ; their direction is almost perpendicular 

 when young, as well as at their full growth, the 

 points only being incurvated. They are real 

 plumes of the most soft and verdant green. 

 The cucurito, the pirijao, the fruit of which re- 

 sembles the apricot, the oreodoxa regia or palma 

 real of the island of Cuba, and the ceroxylon of 

 the high Andes, display the most majestic forms, 

 that we saw among the palm trees of the new 

 world. As we advance toward the temperate 

 zone, the plants of this family decrease in size 

 and beauty. What a difference between the 

 species we have just mentioned, and the date 

 tree of the East, which is become to the land- 

 scape painters of Europe, unfortunately, the 

 type of a group of palm-trees ! 



We must not be surprised that persons, who 

 have travelled only in the north of Africa, in 

 Sicily, or in Murcia, cannot conceive, that of 

 all the forms of large trees, that of the palm 

 is the most grand and beautiful. Incomplete 

 analogies prevent Europeans from having a just 

 idea of the aspect of the torrid zone. All the 

 world knows, for instance, that this zone is em- 



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