File:The Andes and the Amazon -bor across the continent of South America (1876) (14761755066).jpg

Identifier: andesamazonborac76orto (find matches)
Title: The Andes and the Amazon :;bor across the continent of South America
Year: 1876 (1870s)
Authors: Orton, James
Subjects:
Publisher: New York: Harper
Contributing Library: Natural History Museum Library, London
Digitizing Sponsor: Natural History Museum Library, London

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ely exceed the average height of the exogenoustrees. The altitude of the highest Amazonian Palm takenwith a sextant was not over 120 feet; while the Brazil-nut-tree has measured fully 200 feet. Then there are nu-merous low Palms—the poor relations of the more lordlyspecies. * It is a joy forever, a sight never to be forgotten, to have once seen Palms,breaking through, and, as it were, defying, the soft rounded forms of thebroad-leaved vegetation by the stern grace of their simple lines; the immov-able pillar-stem looking the more immovable beneath the toss and lash andflicker of the long leaves, as they awake out of their sun-lit sleep, and rageimpatiently for a while before the mountain gusts, and fall asleep again.Like a Greek statue in a luxurious drawing-room, sharp cut, cold, virginal;shaming, by the grandeur of mere form, the voluptuousness of mere color,however rich and harmonious: so stands the Palm in the forest; to be wor-shiped rather than to be loved.—Chakles Kingslet.
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The Palm-Woeld. 537 Palms have a wonderful development of the organs offructitication—a single individual bearing half a millionof flowers. Yet the number of trees representing a speciesis not in proportion. This is mainly due to the fact thatthe fruit is frequently aborted, or forms the food of hostsof animals—insects, birds, and mammals. Some speciesflower annually; others only once in a life-time. Palmsfurnish man with many important products—wood andleaves for habitations, bark and leaves for cloth and cord-age, buds and fruit for food.* At the beginning of this century, only twenty-three spe-cies of Palms were known to the scientific world. Now,mainly through the labors of Humboldt and Bonpland,Spix and Martins, Poeppig, Wallace, Spruce, Wendland,and Griesbach, in the New World, and of Blume and Grif-fith in the Old, we distinguish nearly 600 species. These beltthe earth between the latitudes of New Zealand and SouthCarolina. Humboldt was right in calling South America the

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