This is the only American species of the genus, and it inhabits exclusively the tide-flooded lands of the Lower Amazon and Pará rivers, being quite unknown in the interior. When descending from the Rio Negro to Pará in the summer of 1852, I observed some of our Indians who had made the voyage before, pointing out this tree to their less travelled companions as one of the curiosities of the lower country not to be found in the “Sertaõ.” It is probable that the leaf, though not entire, is the largest in the whole vegetable kingdom, some of them covering a surface of more than 200 square feet. In a few years we may be able to see them in the magnificent Palm House at Kew, where young plants are now growing. Plate II. fig. 1, a fruit of _Raphia tædigera_ of the natural size. Genus MAURITIA, _Linnæus_. Male flowers on one tree, female or hermaphrodite flowers on another. The spathes are imperfect, bract-ike, tubular sheaths. The male flowers have six stamens. The female flowers have a three-lobed stigma and six imperfect stamens. The stems are either tall, columnar and smooth, or more slender and armed with strong conical spines. The leaves are all fan-shaped or radiating from a centre. The spadix is very large and pinnately branched, and grows from among the leaves. The fruits are of moderate size, oval or globular, and covered with rather small imbricated scales pointing downwards. Four species are described by Martius, three of which occur in the Amazon district, and four more were met with by me on the Rio Negro, so that the genus seems confined to the hottest parts of the American Continent from the level of the sea to an altitude of about 3000 feet. [Illustration: Pl. XVII. W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp. MAURITIA FLEXUOSA. Ht. 100 Ft. ] PLATE XVII. MAURITIA FLEXUOSA, _Linnæus_. Mirití, _Lingoa Geral_. Muríchi, _in Venezuela_. Itá? _Mouth of the Orinoco._ This is one of the most noble and majestic of the American Palms. It grows to a height of eighty or a hundred feet. The stem is straight and smooth, about five feet in circumference, often perfectly cylindrical, but sometimes swollen near the middle or towards the top, so that the bottom is the thinnest part. The leaves spread out in every direction from the top of the stem. They are very large and fan-shaped, the leaflets spreading out rigidly on all sides and only drooping at the tips and at the midrib or elongation of the petiole. The leaves stand on long stalks which are very straight and thick, and much swollen at the base which clasps the stem. A full-grown fallen leaf of this tree is a grand sight. The expanded sheathing base is a foot in diameter; the petiole is a solid beam ten or twelve feet long, and the leaf itself is nine or ten in diameter. An entire leaf is a load for a man.