48 
WONDERS OF THE TROPICAL FORESTS. 
under surface. The odorous white blossoms, deepening^ 
into roseate hues, are composed of several hundred 
petals ; and, measuring no less than fourteen inches in 
diameter, rival the colossal proportions of the leaves. 
The Victoria is found all over the Amazon district, but 
rarely or never iu the river itself. It seems to delight 
in still waters, (growing in inlets, lakes, or very quiet 
branches of the river fully exposed to the sun. 
The trunk of several tropical trees offers the i-emarhable 
peculiarity of bulging out in the middle like a barrel. In 
the Brazilian forests, the Pao Barrigudo arrests the atten- 
tion of every traveller by its odd veiitricose slmi>e, nearly 
half as broad in the centre as long, and gradually tapering 
towards the bottom and the top, whence spring a few thin 
and scanty branches. It is only by seeing gre^it numbers 
of these trees all with their character more or less pal- 
pable, that one can believe it is not an accidental cir- 
cumstance in the individual tree, instead of being truly 
characteristic of the species. 
The Delabechea, or bottle-tree, discovered by lilr, 
Mitchell in tropical Australia, has the same lumpish 
mode of gi^:>wth. Its wood is of so loose a texture that, 
when boiling water is poured over its shavings, a clear 
jelly is formed, and becomes a thick viscid Tuass. 
In other trees which, struggling upwards to air and 
light, attain a prodigious altitude, or from their enor- 
mous girth and the colossal expansion of their branches 
require steadying from beneath, we find buttresses 
projecting like rays from all sides of the trunk. They 
are frequently from six to twelve inches thick, and 
project from five to fifteen feet, and, as they ascend, 
gradually sink into the bole and disappear at the height 
of from ten to twenty feet from the ground. By the 
firm resistance which they offer below, the ti'ees are 
eflectuftlly protected from the leverage of the crown, by 
which they would otherwise be uprooted. Some of these 
buttresses are so smooth and flat as almost to resemble 
