540 



and they appear about the end of March and 

 the beginning of April. The fruits ripen toward 

 the end of May, and some trees retain them till 

 the end of August. These fruits, which are as 

 large as the head of a child, often twelve or 

 thirteen inches in diameter, make an enormous 

 noise in falling from the tops of the trees. I 

 know nothing more fitted to seize the mind 

 with admiration of the force of organic action 

 in the equinoctial zone, than the aspect of 

 these great ligneous pericarps, for instance, 

 the cocoa-tree of the Maldives (lodoicea) among 

 the monocotyledons, and the bertholletia and 

 the lecythis among the dicotyledons. In our 

 climates the cucurbitaceae only produce in the 

 space of a few months fruits of an extraordinary 

 size ; but these fruits are pulpy and succulent. 

 Between the tropics, the bertholletia forms in 

 less than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the lig- 

 neous part of which is half an inch thick, and 

 which it is difficult to saw with the sharpest 

 instruments. A great naturalist* has already ob- 

 served, that the wood of fruits attains in general 



low, very large, and have some similitude to those of the 

 bombax ceiba. Mr. Bonpland says however, in his botani- 

 cal journal written on the banks of the Rio Negro, flos viola- 

 ceus. It was thus the Indians of the river had described to 

 him the colour of the corolla. 



* Richard, Analyses des Fruits, p. 9. 



