Stems slender, flexible, climbing over shrubs or trees. Leaves alternate, pinnate, much sheathing, with long hooked spines in the place of the three or four terminal pair of leaflets. The spadices are axillary and simply branched, the spathes double, fusiform or ventricose, and the fruits are small, round, and generally red. The stems and leaves are more or less prickly. Fourteen species of these curious Palms are found in various parts of South America, principally in the low lands, as they are not known at a greater height than 2000 feet above the level of the sea. They differ remarkably from all other American palms in their long climbing stems, in which they resemble the Calami or Canes so abundant in the East Indies. [Illustration: Pl. XXVII. W. Fitch lith. Ford & West Imp. DESMONCUS MACROACANTHUS. Ht. 50 Ft. ] PLATE XXVII. DESMONCUS MACROACANTHUS, _Martius_. Jacitára, _Lingoa Geral_. The stem of this palm is very slender, weak and flexible, often sixty or seventy feet long, and climbing over bushes and trees or trailing along the ground. It is armed with scattered tubercular prickles. The leaves grow alternately along the stem; they are pinnate, with from three to five pairs of leaflets, beyond which the midrib is produced and armed with several pairs of strong spines directed backwards, and with numerous smaller prickles. The leaflets are ovate, with the edges waved or curled. The bases of the petioles are expanded into long membranous sheaths. The spadices grow on long stalks from the axils of the leaves and are simply branched. The spathes are ventricose, erect, persistent and prickly, and the fruit is globular, of a red colour, and not eatable. The rind or bark of this species is much used for making the “tipitis” or elastic plaited cylinders used for squeezing the juice out of the grated Mandiocca-root in the manufacture of farinha. These cylinders are sometimes made of the rind of certain water plants and of the petioles of several palms, but those constructed of “Jacitára” are said to outlast two or three of the others, and though they are much more difficult to make, are most generally used among the Indian tribes. When the cylinders are used they are suspended from a strong pole, having been first filled with the grated pulp. A long lever is passed through the loop at the lower end of the “tipiti,” by means of which it is stretched, the power being applied by a woman sitting on the further extremity of the pole. The cylinder thus becomes powerfully contracted, and the poisonous juice runs out at every part of the surface and is caught in a pan below in order to be carefully thrown away, for it would cause speedy death to any domestic animal which should drink it.