46 
NOTES OF A BOTANIST 
CHAP. 
seen at Caripi. But more striking than their size 
are their graceful forms and wondrous variety — 
qualities which only a long acquaintance enables us 
fully to appreciate. The flowers of palms are, it is 
true, comparatively small ; and being usually of a 
pale yellow colour, are conspicuous only when 
massed on the large spadices of the taller-growing 
species ; but in their exquisite odour they often 
yield to no flowers whatever. In many cases the 
odour is that of mignonette, but I think a whole 
acre of that darling weed would not exhale as much 
perfume as a single male spadix of the Carana 
palm of the Rio Negro. The flowers of the slender 
Sangapilla palm of the Peruvian Andes preserve 
their fine scent for months, even in the dry state ; 
whence the Indian girls wear them in their hair, 
put them in their beds, and adorn therewith the 
altars of their household saints. 
In some places the lanceolate grassy leaves, 
suspended from slender wiry branches, of the 
bamboo mingle with the leaves of exogenous trees 
and the fronds of palms ; although, after having 
seen the noble bamboo groves of the Andine 
valleys, the low-growing, intricate, and compara- 
tively inelegant bamboos of Para pale on the 
recollection. 
Where the ground lies tolerably high and dry, 
as in the forest at Tauaii, which I have had more 
particularly in my eye throughout this sketch, the 
ground-vegetation usually includes but few of the 
larger herbaceous endogens ; but in low moist flats, 
large-leaved Scitamineae and Musaceae give quite a 
character to the scene by their abundance. There 
congregate the Heliconiae, looking like their near 
