“Nature seems to have accumulated all the beauties of form in the Jagua palm, which, intermingled with the Cucurito or Vadgihai, whose stem rises to a height of 80 or even more than 100 feet, crowns the granite rocks at the cataracts of Atures and Maypures, and which we also occasionally saw on the lonely banks of the Cassiquiare. Their smooth and slender stems rise to a height of from 64 to 75 feet, projecting like a colonnade above the dense mass of the surrounding foliage. These aërial summits present a marked and beautiful contrast with the thickly-leaved species of _Ceiba_, and with the forest of _Laurineæ_, _Calophyllum_, and the different species of _Amyris_ which surround them. Their leaves, which seldom exceed seven or eight in number, incline vertically upwards to a height of 16 or 17 feet, and are curled at the extremities in a kind of feathery tuft. The parenchyma of the leaf is of a thin grass-like texture, causing the leaflets to wave with graceful lightness on the gently oscillating leaf-stalk. The floral buds burst forth, in all species of palms, from the stem immediately beneath the leaves; and the mode in which this takers place modifies their physiognomical character. Thus in some, as in _Corozo del Sinu_, the sheath is perfectly erect, and the fruit rises like a thyrsus, resembling the fruits of the Bromelia. In the greater number, the sheaths, which in some species are smooth, and in others very prickly and rough, incline downwards. In some, again, the male blossoms are of a dazzling white, and it may then be seen shining from a great distance; but in most species of palms they are yellow, closely compressed, and of an almost faded appearance, even when they first burst from the spathe. “In palms with feathery leaves the leaf-stalks either burst from the dry, rough, ligneous portion of the stem (as in _Cocos_, _Phœnix_, _Palma Real del Sinu_), or there rises in the rough part of the stem a grass-green, smooth, and thinner shaft, like one column above another, from which the leaf-stalk springs, as in _Palma Real de la Havana_, _Oreodoxa regia_, which excited the admiration of Columbus. In the fan-palms (_foliis palmatis_), the leafy crown often rests on a layer of dry leaves, which imparts to the tree a character of melancholy solemnity and grandeur (as in _Moriche_, _Palma de sombrero de la Havana_). In some umbrella-palms, the crown consists of a very few scattered leaves, raised on slender stalks (as in _Miraguama_).