356 
DirUCTTLTIES XU IIEBBOIIIZATIOH. 
calophyllum from seven to eight indies long, the Amyris 
earafia, and the mani. All these trees (with the exception 
of our new genus Retiniphylluin) were more than one hun- 
dred or one hundred and ten feet high. As their trunks 
throw out branches only toward the summit, we had some 
trouble in procuring both leaves and flowers. The latter 
were frequently strewed upon the ground at the foot of the 
trees; but, the plants of different families being grouped 
together in these forests, and every tree being covered with 
lianas, we could not, with any degree of confidence, rely on 
the authority of the natives, when they assured us that a 
flower belonged to such orsueh a tree. Amid these riches of 
nature heborizations caused us more chagrin than satis- 
faction. What we could gather appeared to us of little 
interest, compared to what we could not reach. It rained 
unceasingly during several months, and M. Bonpland lost 
the greater part of the specimens which he had been com- 
pelled to dry by artificial heat. Our Indians distinguished 
the leaves better than the coroll a3 or the fruit. Occupied 
ja seeking timber for canoes, they are inattentive to 
flowers. “All those great trees bear neither flowers nor 
fruits,” they repeated unceasingly. Like the botanists of 
antiquity, they denied what they had not taken the 
trouble to observe. They were tired with our questions, and 
exhausted our patience in return. 
We have already mentioned that the same chemical pro- 
perties being sometimes found in the same organs of dif- 
ferent families of plants, these families supply each other’s 
places in various climates. Several species of palms* furnish 
the inhabitants of equinoctial America and Africa with the 
oil which we derive from the olive. What the coniferie are 
to the temperate zone, the terebinthaceso and the guttifer® 
are to the torrid. In the forests of those burning climates, 
* In Africa, the elais or maba; in America the cocoa-tree. In the 
cocoa-tree it is the perisperm ; and in the elais (as in the olive, and the 
oleineae in general) it is the sarcocarp, or the pulp of the pericarp, that 
yields oil. This difference, observed in the sume family, appears to me 
very remarkable, though it is in no way contradictory to the results 
obtained by De Candolle in his ingenious researches on the chemical pro- 
perties of plants. If our Alfonsia oleifera belong to the genus Elais, (as 
Brown, with great reason believes,) it follows, that in the same genus the 
oil is found in the sarcocarp and in the perisperm. 
