ABUNDANCE Or SERPENTS. 
369 
of furniture to which they wish to give a line white colour. 
It thickens by the contact of the air, without growing yel- 
low, and it appears singularly glossy. We have already 
mentioned that the caoutchouc is the oily part, the butter 
of all vegetable milk. It is, no doubt, a particular modifica- 
tion of caoutchouc that forms this coagulum, this white and 
glossy skin, that seems as if covered with copal varnish. If 
different colours could bo given to this muky varnish, a 
very expeditious method would be found of painting and 
varnishing our carriages by one process. The more we study 
vegetable chemistry in the torrid zone, the more we shall 
discover, in remote spots, and half-prepared in the organs of 
plants, products which we believe belong only to the animal 
kingdom, or which we obtain by processes which are often 
tedious and difficult. Already we have found the wax that 
coats the palm-tree of the Andes of Quindiu, the silk 
of the palm-tree of Mocoa, the nourishing milk of the 
palo de vaca, the butter-tree of Africa, and the caseous sub- 
stances obtained from the almost animalized sap of the 
Oarica papaya. These discoveries will be multiplied, when, 
as the political state of the world seems now to indicate, 
^European civilization shall flow in a great measure toward 
the equinoctial regions of the New Continent. 
The marshy tract between Javita and the embarcadero 
of Pi mi oh in is infested with great numbers of vipers. 
Before we took possession of the deserted hut, the Indiana 
killed two great mapanare serpents.* These grow to lour 
°t five feet long. They appeared to me to be the same 
species as those I saw in the Rio Magdalena, This serpent 
j s a beautiful animal, but extremely venomous, white on the 
Belly, and spotted with brown and red on the back. As 
the inside of the hut was filled with grass, and we were 
tying on the ground, there being no means of suspending 
hammocks, we were not without inquietude during the 
fright. In the morning a large viper was found on lifting 
the jaguar-skin upon which one of our domestics had slept. 
* This name is given in the Spanish colonies to very different species. 
he Coluber mapanare of the province of Caracas has one hundred and 
orty-two ventral plates, and thirty-eight double caudal scales. The 
Coluber mapanare of the Rio Magdalena has two hundred and eight 
Central plates, and sixty-four double caudal scales. 
v on. ii. 2 b 
