452 
abukbah ss or the kttts. 
among the monocotyledons, and the bertholletia and the 
iecythis among the dicotyledons. In our climates only the 
cucurbitaceae produce in the space of a few months fruits of 
an extraordinary size ; hut these fruits are pulpy and suc- 
culent. Within the tropics, the bertholletia forms in less 
than fifty or sixty days a pericarp, the ligneous part of 
which is half an inch thick, and which it is difficult to saw 
with the sharpest instruments. A great naturalist lias 
observed, that the wood of fruits attains in general a hard- 
ness which is scarcely to be found in the wood of the trunks 
of trees. The pericarp of the bertholletia has traces of four 
cells, and I have sometimes found even five. The seeds 
have two very distinct coverings, and this circumstance 
renders the structure of the fruit more complicated than in 
the lecythis, the pekea or cart/ocar, and the saouvari. The 
first tegument is osseous or ligneous, triangular, tubercu- 
lated on its exterior surface, and of the colour of cinnamon. 
Tour or five, and sometimes eight of these triangular nuts, 
are attached to a central partition. As they are loosened 
in time, they move freely in the large spherical pericarp. 
The capuchin monkeys (Simia chiropotes) are singularly 
fond of the Brazil nuts ; and the noise made by the seeds, 
when the fruit is shaken as it falls from the tree, excites the 
appetites of these animals in the highest degree. I have 
most frequently found only from fifteen to twenty-two nuts 
in each fruit. The second tegument of the almonds is 
membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow. Their taste is 
extremely agreeable when they are fresh ; but the oil, with 
which they abound, and which is so useful in the art®, 
becomes easily rancid. Although at the Upper Orinoco 
we often ate considerable quantities of these almonds for 
want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so 
doing. The spherical pericarp of the bertholletia, perforated 
at the summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled 
part of the columella forms (according to M. Kunth) a 
sort of inner cover, as in the fruit of the lecythis, but it 
seldom opens of itself. Many seeds, from the decompo- 
sition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty 
of germination before the rainy season, in which the lig- 
neous integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of 
putrefaction. A tale is very current on the banks of the 
