Memoranda on the Palms of British Guiana. 
By the Editor. 
ROBABLY no country oft ^qual size is richer in 
palms than is British Guiana ; and on account 
of their great variety, and still more because of 
their very great beauty, my attention during my travels 
has constantly been attracted toward these. Before long 
I realized that, though the wonderful beauty of palms 
has been so often commented upon that the word palm 
in itself suggests something exquisitely beautiful, I had 
failed, as I believe most who have never seen tropical palms 
in their native places do fail, to realize that the chief glory 
and beauty of palm trees consists in the marvellous 
variety of their beauty. To most home-dwellers the 
word palm suggests a plant with a straight, rather stiff, 
stem, crowned by a bunch of, beautiful enough, fern- 
like fronds ; but it is only after living among the wild palms 
of the tropics that one realizes the exquisitely varied 
beauty which these plants show, in stem and root, in leaf 
and leaflet, in flower and fruit, in their parts and as 
wholes.* At least one other traveller, Mr. A. R. Wal- 
lace, has dwelt on this beauty of variety ; and he has 
attempted, as I fear to attempt, to describe in words, 
* " As we advance toward the temperate zone, the plants of this 
family (palms) decrease in size and beauty. What a difference between 
the species we have just mentioned and the date-tree of the East, which 
unfortunately has become to the landscape painters of Europe the type 
of a group of palm-trees 1 It is not surprising that persons who have 
travelled only in the north of Africa in Sicily, or in Spain, cannot 
conceive that, of all large trees, the palm is the most grand and beautiful." 
Humboldt, Personal Narrative. Bohn's Edition. Vol. ii. p. 257. 
EE 
