VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL PRODUCTIONS. 329 
feet long and five wide ; but this is not an uncommon size 
of the manaca as it is cut for thatching, one leaf extend¬ 
ing across the roof. After remaining some years in the 
manaca state, the stem begins to elongate, and as it 
rises, the leaves become smaller, as is the case with the 
coconut and other palms so far as known. The leaf-stems 
are persistent, giving the tree a rough, untidy look, but 
doubtless having a purpose to fulfil in the economy of 
Nature. This palm is now known as corozo, and begins 
to fruit. The male inflorescence is an immense mass of 
more than thirty thousand staminate flowers in a com¬ 
pound raceme between four and five feet long; these have 
a heavy, not disagreeable odor, and attract a great many 
bees and wasps, so that on one occasion the mozo who 
climbed the stem and cut for me a fine specimen was 
badly stung. These insects were so persistent after a 
great deal of shaking that the camera was used as 
quickly as possible, specimens were saved, and the spadix 
was, with the too-attractive flowers, thrown into the 
river. The pollen, which under the microscope shows 
a form exactly like a baker’s roll, is in such abundance 
from the four hundred and fifty thousand stamens that 
it would fill a pint measure. The spathe, or cover of 
the inflorescence, looks like leather, is deeply furrowed 
on the outside, and would make a commodious bath-tub 
for a child. The fertile spadix has shorter branches, 
with the rather large flowers succeeded by from five to ten 
nuts, the whole bunch, which is about five feet long and 
weighs more than a hundred pounds, bearing from eight 
hundred to a thousand nuts. These nuts are two and a 
half inches long, and covered with a fibrous husk and so 
thick a shell that the valuable kernel cannot be extracted 
