GBOiVTH. OB THE BEBTHOln-JSTIA. 
451 
of Brazil-nuts ; and it was long believed that, like the fruit 
of the pekea, they grew on separate stalks. They have 
turnished an article of trade for a century past to the 
inhabitants of Grand Para, by whom they are sent either 
directly to Europe, or to Cayenne, where they are called 
touka. The celebrated botanist, Correa de Serra, told us 
that this tree abounds in the forests in the neighbourhood 
of Macapa, at the mouth of the Amazon; that it there bears 
the name of oapwcaya, and that the inhabitants gather the 
almonds, like those of the lecythis, to express the oil. A 
cargo of almonds of the juvia, brought into Havre, captured 
by a privateer, in 1807, was employed for the same pur- 
pose. 
The tree that yields the Brazil-nuts is generally not more 
than two or three feet in diameter, but attains one hundred 
or one hundred and twenty feet in height. It does not 
resemble the mammee-tree, the star-apple, and several other 
trees of the tropics, the branches of which (as in the laurel- 
trees of the temperate zone) rise almost straight towards the 
sky. The branches of the bertholletia are open, very long, 
almost entirely bare towards the base, and loaded at their 
summits with tufts of very close foliage. This disposition of 
the semieoriaceous leaves, which are a little silvery on their 
under part, and more than two feet long, makes the branches 
bend down toward the ground, like the fronds of the palm- 
tree. We did not see this majestic tree in blossom : it is not 
loaded with flowers* till in its fifteenth year, and they 
appear about the end of March and the beginning of April. 
The fruits ripen towards the end of May, and some trees 
retain them till the end of August. These fruits, which are 
as large as the head of a child, often twelve or thirteen inches 
in diameter, make a very loud noise in falling from the 
tops of the trees. Nothing is more fitted to fill the mind 
with admiration of the force of organic action in the equi- 
noctial zone than the aspect of those great ligneous peri- 
carps, for instance, the cocoa-tree (lodoicea) of the Maldives 
* According to accounts somewhat vague, th 'y are yellow, very large, 
and have some similitude to those of the J3ombax ceiba. M. Bonpland 
says, however, in his botanical journal written on the banks of the Rio 
Negro, “flos violaceus/’ It was thus the Indians of the river had 
described to him the colour of the corolla. 
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