Mr. Higson met with two species of cow tree, which he states to be abundant in the deep and humid woods of the provinces of Chocó and Popayán. In an extract from his diary, dated Ysconde, May 7, 1822, he gives an account of an excursion he made, about twelve miles up the river, in company with the alcaide and two other gentlemen, in quest of some of these milk trees, one species of which, known to the inhabitants by the name of Popa, yields, during the ascent of the sap, a redundance of a nutritive milky juice, obtained by incisions made into the thick bark which clothes the trunk, and which he describes as of an ash color externally, while the interior is of a clay red. Instinct, or some natural power closely approaching to the reasoning principle, has taught the jaguars, and other wild beasts of the forest, the value of this milk, which they obtain by lacerating the bark with their claws and catching the milk as it flows from the incisions. A similar instinct prevails amongst the hogs that have become wild in the forests of Jamaica, where a species of Rhus, the _Rhus Metopium_ of botanists, grows, the bark of which, on being wounded, yields a resinous juice, possessing many valuable medicinal properties, and among them that of rapidly cicatrizing wounds. How this valuable property was first discovered by the hogs, or by what peculiar interchange of ideas the knowledge of it was communicated by the happy individual who made it to his fellow hogs, is a problem which, in the absence of some porcine historiographer, we have little prospect of solving. But, however this may be, the fact is sufficiently notorious in Jamaica, where the wild hogs, when wounded, seek out one of these trees, which, from the first discoverers of its sanative properties, have been named "Hog Gum Trees," and, abrading the bark with their teeth, rub the wounded part of their bodies against it, so as to coat the wound with a covering of the gummy, or rather gum-resinous fluid, that exudes from the bark. In like manner, as Mr. Higson informs us, the jaguars, instructed in the nutritious properties of the potable juice of the Popa, jump up against the stem, and lacerating the bark with their claws greedily catch the liquid nectar as it issues from the wound. By a strange perverseness of his nature, man, in the pride of his heart and the intoxication of his vanity, spurns this delicious beverage, which speedily fattens all who feed on it, and contents himself with using it, when inspissated by the sun, as a bird-lime to catch parrots; or converting it into a glue, which withstands humidity, by boiling it with the gum of the mangle-tree (_Sapium aucuparium?_), tempered with wood ashes. Mr. Higson states that they caught plenty of the milk, which was of the consistence of cream, of a bland and sweetish taste, and a somewhat aromatic flavor, and so white as to communicate a tolerably permanent stain wherever it fell; it