Note 27 — Chapter II · RIO DE JANEIRO AND ITS ENVIRONS.—JUIZ DE FORA.

Indeed, their diversity is much greater even than that of our Oaks, and it would require a comprehensive comparison with a majority of our forest-trees to match the differences they exhibit among themselves; and their native names, far more euphonic than the systematic names under which they are entered in our scientific works, are as familiar to the Indians as those of our beeches, birches, hazels, chestnuts, poplars, or willows to our farmers. There are four essentially different forms among the palms: the tall ones, with a slender and erect stem, terminating with a crown of long feathery leaves, or with broad fan-shaped leaves; the bushy ones, the leaves of which rise as it were in tufts from the ground, the stem remaining hidden under the foliage; the brush-like ones, with a small stem, and a few rather large leaves; and the winding, creeping, slender species. Their flowers and fruits are as varied as their stock. Some of these fruits may be compared to large woody nuts, with a fleshy mass inside; others have a scaly covering; others resemble peaches or apricots, while others still are like plums or grapes. Most of them are eatable and rather pleasant to the taste. It is a thousand pities that so many of these majestic trees should have been deprived of their sonorous native names, to bear henceforth, in the annals of science, the names of some unknown princes, whom flattery alone could rescue from oblivion. The Inaja has become a Maximiliana, the Jara a Leopoldinia, the Pupunha a Guilielma, the Pachiuba an Iriartea, the Carana a Mauritia. The changes from Indian to Greek names have not been more felicitous. I would certainly have preferred Jacitara to Desmonchus, Mucaja to Acrocomia, Baccába to Œnocarpus, Tucuma to Astrocaryum. Even Euterpe for Assai is hardly an improvement.—L. A.