294 
PAL 
PAL 
till their deaths left him without a rival. He had in the 
mean time painted in competition with them both, and 
produced very excellent works. 
When he was left alone, and was much employed, he 
relaxed from the care and diligence he had formerly ufed, 
and his works became flight in execution ; fo much fo, 
that Cefare d’Arpino, remarking upon the flightnefs of 
the ftyle in which he painted, obferved, that he meant to 
make fome day at Venice, to learn of him to make fuch 
a d m i r a b 1 e y/tefc/i es. When price and time, however, were 
left to his own difcretion, in which he did not abound, 
he produced fome works worthy of his former fame; fuch 
as the altar-piece at the church of St. Cofmo and Dami- 
ano ; the celebrated naval battle of Francefco Bembo, in 
the public palace ; the Saint Apollonia at Cremona, &c. 
The compofitions of the younger Palma are more diftin- 
guifhable for their copioufnefs than the judgment with 
which they are condudfed, and his defign is more bold 
than correfl. His excellencies are, richnefs of compoli- 
tion, force and variety of expreffion, frefhnefs and tranf- 
parency of tint, and lightnefs of touch. His works are 
numerous in the churches and palaces of Italy, and in 
foreign colledlions. A confiderable number have been 
engraved, and fome by his own hand : to his engravings 
he frequently figned his name at length ; but fometimes 
ufed the monogram of a palm-branch eroding diagonally 
the letter P, as is reprefented on the preceding Engraving. 
Fufeli's Pilkington. 
PALM'A CHRIS'TI. See Orchis and Ricinus. 
PAL'MA la NUO'VA, a town of Italy, in the coun¬ 
try of Friuli, on the borders of Goritz, fituated on a 
canal which communicates with the Lifonzo. It is for¬ 
tified and furrounded with nine baftions, which bear 
the name of nine Venetian noblemen. It is fifty-five 
miles north-eaft of Venice, and twenty-four north-well 
of Trielle. Lat. 46. 2. N. Ion. 13. 16, E. 
PAL'MA di SO'LO, a fea-port town of the ifland of 
Sardinia, on the fouth coaft : fifteen miles fouth-eall of 
Villa de Iglefias. Lat. 39. 20. N. Ion. 6. 24. E. 
PALMA'DA, f A blow on the hand with a ferula. 
Bailey. 
PAL'MZE, Jl in botany, the palm-tribe, a mod dif- 
tinfl and important, as well as (lately and beautiful, na¬ 
tural order of plants, fo named from Palma, the ancient 
appellation of the moll valuable among them, the date- 
tree, whole foliage was confecrated, firll by the Greeks, 
and then by the Romans, as an emblem of viflory, and 
whofe fruit has been a principal article of food in the eall 
from the remotell antiquity to the prefent day. The 
word palma is (uppofedto have been applied to this tree, 
from the divifipns of its leaves having fome refemblance 
to the fingers and palm of the hand, whence, perhaps, by 
an alfociarion of ideas, the fruit came to be called daftyli, 
from (JaalvXo?, a finger, to which its likenefs is at firll not 
apparent. The Greeks named this kind of palm <pom%, 
which Linnaeus has retained. See Phcenix. That great 
botanift terms the natural order in quellion “ princes of 
the vegetable kingdom, of Indian origin, dillinguilhed 
by their lheathed and many-fpiked flowers, their flowing 
habit, their lofty ftature, the fimple elegance of their 
unbranched long-enduring Hem, the leafy evergreen gar¬ 
lands with which they are crowned, and their princely 
treafures of rich fruit. They are tributary to the firll 
order, or Primates, amonglt animals ; more efpecially to 
the lord of the animal creation, who is deflined, in a 
Hate of nature, to dwell among them.” 
The botanical arrangement of Palma was, in the early 
days of Linnaeus, a work ofconfiderabledifficulty. Tour- 
nefort had dillinguilhed no proper genera in this order, 
nor Plumier more than one. So imperfefl were the ac¬ 
counts of their flowers in early botanical works, and fo 
impoflible was it for the author of the fexual fyltem to 
procure accefs, in mod inllances, to the reality, that he 
could not afeertain enough of their ftru&ure to refer 
more than a very few to his clafles and orders j hence he 
affembled as many as he knew of the family in an appen¬ 
dix to his fyllem, except Calamus, of whofe relationlhip 
to the reft he was not aware. See the article Botany, 
vol. iii. p. 259, 289, 294. The genera now underltood to 
belong to this orderare—Areca, Baflris, Boralfus, Cary- 
ota, Chamaerops, Cocos, Corypba, Cycas, Dracaena, Eiseis, 
Elate, Hydocharis, Licuala, Mauritia, Nipa, Phcenix, 
Rhapis, Stratiotes, Thrinax, and Zamia. To thefe Monf. 
Labillardiere has added a newly-difeovered genus, Areng. 
He calls his plant 
Areng facchifera, or fugar-bearing areng. - ft is very 
common in the Moluccas; and, like the other fpecies of 
date-tree, is of very extenfive utility. By proper incifions, 
a juice is obtained from it, which afFords very good Ri¬ 
ga r by evaporation. Mem. de Vhijiitut National, tome iv. 
1802. 
The following charafleriftic (ketches of this remarkable 
family of the vegetable kingdom, are extrafted from the 
magnificent botanical work of Melfrs. Humboldt and 
Bonpland, completed at Paris in 1816. 
The family of the palms thrives bed between the tro¬ 
pics, in the plains, and to the height of 5o'o fathoms, in 
places where the mean, temperature in fuminer is from 
19 0 to 28° of the centigrade thermometer; and, except¬ 
ing the ifland of Cuba, to which the north wind from 
Canada brings a colder air, where the cold in winter is 
not below 15 0 . Yet fome, which the travellers believe 
to have been wholly unknown previoully to their vifit to 
the Andes’, approach the limits of everlafting fnow. If 
the family of the palms is dillinguilhed by beauty of form 
and its large fize from almoli all the other familjes of ve¬ 
getables, fo likewife does it furpafs them in the various 
ufes to which they are applied. They furnifh articles of 
the mod diftimilar nature ; wine, oil, wax, flour, fugar, 
and fait. 
In the trafts to the north of the line, between the 
mountains of Caraccas and the river of Amazons, tra- 
verfed by Humboldt and Bonpland, they found the palms 
in general in bloflom in January and February, but fome 
of them flower at other feafons of the year. Their fe¬ 
cundity is aftonifning: the powerful ailion of the fap is 
developed not only in thick umbrageous foliage, but 
alfo in an innumerable multitude of flowers' and fruit. 
Not only the fields planted with palm-trees, but even the 
foil that has never been cultivated by man, is frequently 
covered to the depth of three inches with the fruit of 
the Cocos butyracea, the Mauritia, &c. Every flower- 
capfule of the date-tree (Phcenix daSlylifera) contains, 
according to Kaempfer, above 12,000 male flowers. Hum¬ 
boldt and Bonpland have found a much greater number 
upon another fpecies. In one Angle catkin-lhaped bunch 
of flowers, of which each capfule contains from no to 
120, they counted 1800 male flowers ; fo that the total 
number in each capfule may be computed at 207,000 
flowers. According to a (imilar calculation, every branch 
of a fpecies which furnilhes an excellent aliment on the 
banks of the Oroonoko, produces 8000 fruits, many of 
which indeed drop oft’ before maturity. In the palm- 
grounds planted with the pihiguao, each tree yields an¬ 
nually upon an average 400 fruits of the fliape of apples; 
and the Francifcans on the Oroonoko and Guainia know 
from experience, that, whenever there is an uncommonly 
abundant crop of palm-fruit, the Indians grow remark¬ 
ably fat. And M. Humboldt obferves, that thofe fpe¬ 
cies, the pith of which furnilhes a kind of fago-flour, that 
forms an excellent article of food for the inhabitants of 
the New World, deferve to be particularly recommended 
to the notice of future travellers in America. 
The following account of the vegetation of this tribe, 
extrafted from Desfontaines, is publilhed in Lamarck’s 
Di£l. vol. iv. " When the feed of a palm-tree is com¬ 
mitted to the earth, the leaves unfold in fucceflion, and 
increafe in number, during foul or five years. The crown 
of the root dilates in the fame proportion. The bulb, 
formed by the reunion of the footllalks of the leaves, 
1 fwell* 
