
          you with some more of the ripe fruit or seeds. The few
that I sent you with the other (last) parcel are all that I have
seen. The fruit is an oblong shape and when ripe
nearly the size of a grain of ground seed corn.

I send you also by the same vessel the top of a
cabbage palmetto or Chamaerops palmetto [Sabal palmetto] which grows
abundantly on the sea coast in the southern country.

As this is an important article to the civilized
man as well as the savage I have thought it
might be interesting to you. The body or caudex
is very durable in salt water and said to be proof
against worms that are so destructive to ships. It
is much used for building wharves in this country.

The Seminole obtains a rich article of food from 
the young leaves in the top, from the abundance of
its berries he supplies his molasses when hard 
pressed from bread stuff he beats from it a coarse
kind of flour and it is said that they obtain
sale from it by a process similar to ours for
obtaining potash from wood. These are all luxuries
too coars for refined society. Still you see
the Seminole lives on something more [added: really] substantial
that air & perhaps your curiosity to know whether
the [?] trees of the country are made up in new
proportions of salt flour & sugar may induce
you to satisfy us as to the chemical properties 
of the plant.

I left Florida in August last on duty with the [?]
emigrants and as I was absent from the country

[sideways: I transplanted & sent to Lieut. J.C. Casey at Tampa Bay several roots of
the Zamia [?] of his that if he obtained any of the ripe fruit
from them or otherwise that he would forward some to you]
        