THE BETTER TREE. 
55 
Whilst the palo de vaca manifests the immense fecundity 
and the bounty of nature in the torrid zone, it also 
reminds us of the numerous causes which favour in those 
fine climates the careless indolence of man. Mungo Park 
lias made known the butter-tree of Bambarra, which M. De 
Candolle suspects to be of the family of sapotas, as well as 
our milk-tree. The plantain, the sago-tree, and the mauritia 
of the Orinoco, are as much bread-trees as the rema of the 
South Sea. The fruits of the erescentia and the lecythis 
serve as vessels for containing food, while the spathes of the 
palms, and the bark of trees, furnish caps and garments 
without a seam. The knots, or rather the interior cells of 
Bouillon- Lagrange, and Vauquelin (Annales de Cliimie, vol. xlvi, vol. li, 
vo*. lxxix, vol. lxxx, vol. lxxxv, have pointed out a great quantity of al- 
bumen. in the substance of the Agaricus deliciosus, an edible mushroom, 
it is this albumen contained in their juice which renders them so hard when 
loiled. . It has been proved that morels (Morchella esculenta) can be con- 
verted into sebaceous and adipocerous matter, capable of being used in the 
fabrication of soap. (De Candolle, sur les Proprietes medicinales des 
Plantes.) Saccharine matter has also been found in mushrooms by Gun- 
ther. It is in the family of the fungi, more especially in the clavariae, phalli, 
uelvetire, the merulii, and the small gymnopae which display themselves 
in a few hours after a storm of rain, that organic nature produces with 
most rapidity the greatest variety of chemical principles — sugar, albumen, 
athpocire, acetate of potash, fat, ozmazome, the aromatic principles, &c. 
It. would be interesting to examine, besides the milk of the lactescent 
tungi, those species which, when cut in pieces, change their colour on the 
contact of atmospheric air. 
Though we have referred the palo de vaca to the family of the sapotas 
we have nevertheless found in it a great resemblance to some plants of the 
urticeous kind especially to the fig-tree, because of its terminal stipulm 
in the shape of a horn ; and to the brosimum, on account of the struc- 
ture of its fruit. AT. Kunth would .even have preferred this last classifi- 
cation; if the description of the fruit, made on the spot, and the nature 
of the milk, which is acrid in the urticese, and sweet in the sapotas, did 
not seem to confirm our conjecture. Bredemeyer saw, like us, the fruit, 
ami not the flower of "**■• otjyj^ree. He asserts that he observed [some- 
imes ?] two seeds, lying one against the other, as in the alligator pear- 
ree (Laurus persea). Perhaps this botanist had the intention of ex- 
pressing the same conformation of the nucleus that Swartz indicates in the 
escnption of the brosimum : — “nucleus bilobus aut bipartibilis.” We 
iave mentioned the places where this remarkable tree grows : it will be 
easy for botanical travellers to procure the flower of the palo de vaca 
arid to remove the doubts which still remain, of the family to which ii 
belongs. 
