257 



the same organs of different families of plants, 

 these families supply the place of each other in 

 various climates. Several species of palms* 

 furnish the equinoctial inhabitants of America 

 and Africa with oil, which we draw from the 

 olive. What the coniferae are to the temperate 

 zone, the terebinthacese and the guttiferae are 

 to the torrid. In the forests of those burning 

 climates, where there is neither pine, nor thuya, 

 nor taxodiums, nor even a podocarpus, resins, 

 balsams, and aromatic gums are furnished by 

 the maronobeas, the icicas, and the amy rises. 

 The collecting of these gummy and resinous 

 substances is an object of trade in the village of 

 Javita. The most celebrated resin bears the 

 name of mani ; and of this we saw masses of 

 several hundred weight, resembling colophony 

 and mastic. The tree which is called mani by 

 the Paraginis, and which Mr. Bonpiand believes 



* In Africa, the elais or maba j in America the cocoa-tree. 

 (See above, vol. iii, p. 202.) In the cocoa-tree it is the pe- 

 risperm j and in the elais (as in the olive, and the oleinese in 

 general) it is the sarcocarp, or the pulp of the pericarp, that 

 yields oil. This difference, observed in the same family, 

 appears to me very remarkable, though it is in no way con- 

 tradictory to the results obtained by Mr. de Candolle hi his 

 ingenious researches on the chemical properties of plants. If 

 our alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus elais, as Mr. Brown 

 with great reason believes ("Plants of Congo," p. 37), it 

 follows, that in the same genus the oil is found in the sarco- 

 carp and in the perisperm. 



VOL. V. S 



I 



