(Astrocaryum Murumuru), the Uauassu (Attalea speciosa), the Inaja (Maximiliana regia), the Baccába (Œnocarpus Baccába), the Paxiuba (Iriartea exorhiza), the Carana (Mauritia Carana), the Caranai (Mauritia horrida), the Ubim (Geonoma), and the Curua (Attalea spectabilis); of these the two latter are the most useful. The remarkable Piassaba (Leopoldinia Piassaba) occurs only far above the junction of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco. We obtained, however, a specimen that had been planted at Itatiassu. The many small kinds of Ubim (Geonoma), and Maraja (Bactris), and even the Jara (Leopoldinia), are so completely overshadowed by the larger trees that they are only noticed where clustered along the river-banks. Bussus (Manicaria), Assais (Euterpe) Mucaja (Acrocomia), grow also on the Rio Negro, but it remains to be ascertained whether they are specifically identical with those of the Lower Amazons. So peculiar is the aspect of the different species of palms that, from the deck of the steamer, they can be singled out as easily as the live-oaks or pecan-nut trees, so readily distinguished on the lower course of the Mississippi, or the different kinds of oaks, birches, beeches, or walnut-trees which attract observation when sailing along the shores of our Northern lakes. It seems, however, impossible to discriminate between all the trees of this wonderful Amazonian forest; partly because they grow in such heterogeneous associations. In the temperate zone we have oak-forests, pine-forests, birch, beech, and maple woods, the same kinds of trees congregating together on one soil. Not so here; there is the most extraordinary diversity in the combination of plants, and it is a very rare thing to see the soil occupied for any extent by the same kind of tree. A large number of the trees forming these forests are still unknown to science, and yet the Indians, those practical botanists and zoölogists, are well acquainted, not only with their external appearance, but also with their various properties. So intimate is their practical knowledge of the natural objects about them, that I believe it would greatly contribute to the progress of science if a systematic record were made of all the information thus scattered through the land; an encyclopædia of the woods, as it were, taken down from the tribes which inhabit them. I think it would be no bad way of collecting, to go from settlement to settlement, sending the Indians out to gather all the plants they know, to dry and label them with the names applied to them in the locality, and writing out, under the heads of these names, all that may thus be ascertained of their medicinal and otherwise useful properties, as well as their botanical character. A critical examination of these collections would at once correct the information thus obtained, especially if the person intrusted with the care of gathering these materials had so much knowledge of botany as would enable him to