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size. An entire spadix, laden with fruit, is a heavy load for a man. 
The fruits are very oily, but the only use made of them here is 
the preparation of a wine similar to that of the Assai. Trunks of 
a few years' growth are thickly beset with slender rigid spines 
about 2 feet in length, pointing upwards ; these are the nerves of 
the sheathing base of the petioles from which the parenchyma has 
decayed ; they are called by the natives barba de Pataua. When 
the trunk reaches 15 or 20 feet in height, the "beard" begins to 
decay at the base, and the upper part being thus deprived of its 
support falls down in a mass. [I give here a photographic print 
of the allied species of (Enocarpus found at Para, which, though 
common there, is not mentioned by Spruce. I was not able to 
figure it in my Palm Trees of the Amazon. The leaflets are more 
drooping than in the Rio Negro species, and it is not so lofty in 
stature, but is an elegant palm. — Ed.] The Inaja (yMaximiliana 
regia^ Mart.) has the trunk similarly beset with the bases of the 
petioles, until it reaches a certain height, and an Inaja of 40 feet 
high looks a quite different plant from one of 20 feet. Of the 
barba de Pataua the Indians make the arrows for their Grava- 
tanas or Blowing-canes. The Gravatana itself is made of the 
trunk of a small palm, an Iriartea, which I have met with deep 
in the forest at the back of the Barra. It is called Paxiilba-i or 
the little Paxiuba, and grows to from 10 to 18 feet high, the thick- 
ness being little more than an inch. . . . 
A palm much cultivated in the Barra and the adjacent sitios, 
and said to grow wild up the Rio Negro, is the Pupunha, which 
I suppose to be the same as the Piryao {Guilie/ma speciosa^ 
Mart.) mentioned by Humboldt as growing on the Upper Orinoco. 
The fruit of this is perhaps more valuable as an edible than any 
other palm-fruit ; the sarcocarp contains a larg'e quantity of starch, 
and it is sometimes developed to such a degree that the nucleus 
is quite obliterated. Eaten with salt, the boiled or roasted fruit 
much resembles a potato, but it is also very pleasant eating with 
molasses. A spadix of Pupunha, laden with ripe fruit, is one of 
the most beautiful sights the vegetable world can show : the 
fruits are of the clearest scarlet in the upper half, passing below 
into yellow, and at the very base to green. 
On a separate sheet I have written some account of a few of 
the edible fruits found wild in the forests adjacent to the Barra. 
There are several others which I have not yet obtained. Numer- 
ous Myrtaceous and Melastomaceous fruits are eaten, but few of 
them possess any great excellence ; perhaps the best are the 
Guayabas, which belong to various species of Psidium. A Mela- 
stomaceous tree sent from Santarem with fruit rather resembling a 
Guayaba externally, but twelve-celled, is very abundant here. 
The fruit is called Tapii'ra-guayaba or the Tapir's guayaba, but it is 
only insipid eating. The various species of Inga have the seeds 
