WCP2392

[1]

Coneysthorpe

Malton

24 Febr.[uary] 1879.

My dear Wallace

I am in despair with my correspondence, with which I can no means keep pace. I have often wished to write to thank you for your interesting books, but did not like to do ^so unless I c[oul]d say more about them than I felt equal to writing out. To reply fully to the queries in your last ^letter w[oul]d require me to wade thro' [through] several volumes of MSS. [manuscripts], but I have put together a few excerpta which may serve your present purpose, if they only reach you in time.

I fear I cannot adduce much evidence as to the fruits most sought after by birds & monkeys. I have seen birds feed on various fruits, but on scarcely any that were not food for man — or at least for Indian man — although a few of them might be too austere, or too acid, for my taste. If, as Sterne¹ says, "dogs syllogise with their noses", so do birds with their beaks; monkeys and Indians with their teeth: insomuch as relates to the choice of food. In my long voyage on the Casiquiari [sic], Alto Orinoco, and some of their tributary streams, my Indians met with many fruits new to them, all of which that looked at all promising they tried their teeth on; and, if the taste suited, they ate on without any dread of consequences. Drupaceous fruits, especially, were found almost uniformly wholesome, although the juice of the bark &c. might be acrid and poisonous.

(It is curious that in the Apocyneae — an order notable for its abundant milky, and usually poisonous juice — the fruits are rarely, or very slightly, milky; and the succulent fruits (which are found in about half the species) are almost invariably wholesome. You know the Thevetias (Th.[evetia] ahouai, neriifolia, &c.) whose large bony triangular endocarps, strung together, form the rattles which the Uaupé Indians tie round their ankles in their dances. The milk of the bark is a deadly poison — Humboldt² says a scratch from a thumb-nail anointed with it is almost certain death. At Marabitanas a well-grown tree of T.[hevetia] neriifolia grew near the Commandante's house. It bore flowers and ripe fruits — drupes, with a thin yellowish cuticle, & about as much flesh on them as on an average plum; and I noticed that the [2] Commandante's fowls greedily ate up the fleshy parts of any fruit that might chance to fall. Seeing this, I thought I might safely eat of them; so I gathered and ate four. What little taste they had was rather pleasant, and no ill effects followed. I had not then seen (and I saw a few years afterwards) what a quantity of black pepper and tobacco a fowl can swallow with impunity, or I might have thought the experiment rather hazardous.)

Many fruits and seeds are sought by animals of all kinds for the sake of their farinaceous or oleaginous properties. The envelope of these, in any part of the world, is not often gaily coloured, although some pods of Amazonian Leguminose are deep red, and the contained seeds are very often painted or mottled. I suppose, however, it is about the succulent, sweet or acid, fruits — the drupes and berries —you chiefly enquire. The great mass of these are certainly as vividly coloured as any fruits of temperate climes — more so indeed, in many cases, than the flowers that precede them. Call to mind the bright reds and yellows of the Peach palm, the Mango, the enlarged fleshy pear-like petiole of the Cashew, &c., &c. Purple or almost black fruits, often with a "bloom" on them, as found in many genera of Palms (Euterpe, Denocarpus, &c.); in the delicious little sloe-like fruits called Umiri (species of Humirium [)]; in the Cocúras — exquisite grape-like fruits, hanging in a dense thyrse from little trees of the order Artocarpeae (Pourouma cecropiiefolia [sic] Mart.[ius], P.[ourouma] retusa Spruce, P.[ourouma] apiculata S.[pruce], &c.)

Among the smaller Palms, Bactris and Geonoma have some bright red, others black, fruit.

Papaws have the fruit yellow in the species of the plain; in the mountain species greenish, although some of the smaller ones have scarlet fruit.

Myrtles (the berried species, all of which have innocuous, although not many sapid, fruits) have in the great majority of Amazon species black-purple fruits; in some they are red & often intensely acid (as in the Araçás and Pitangas); in others yellow (Guayabas, etc.)

Succulent fruits with a russet or grey coat are not numerous on the Amazon. There, as elsewhere, they owe that peculiarity to the cuticle minutely breaking up and withering, yet still more [3] or less firmly persisting. Of this class are the very fine and large fruits called Cumá in Tupi, Pendári in Barré, yielded by two Apocyneous trees of the Rio Negro (Couma triphylla Rudge (Aubl.[et]) & C.[ouma] dulcis Spruce) and one of the Orinoco (C.[ouma] oblonga Spruce). The thickish russet inedible rind contains seeds nestling in copious pulp, which eats rather like the fruit of the Medlar or Service, although far sweeter, whence the Portuguese colonists called the tree Sorveira. The bark abounds in thick, sweet and wholesome (!) milk, which is excellent glue.

As the Greengage (whose coat is sometimes partly russet-grey) is the finest among European plums, so is the homely-coloured Cumá among all the fruits of the Rio Negro.

I think I could count ^on my fingers (if I exclude the melon tribe) all the edible green drupes and berries of the Rio Negro. The chief of them are the Alligator pear and some Custard-apples; although some of the latter have a yellow, some a white, and some a red-purple rind.

I had a few more extracts for you, but as they all tend to show the prevalence of conspicuous colour in succulent fruits, the ab<ove> may suffice.

I know not what bearing the above statistics may have on Mr. Grant Allen's³ theory, for I have not seen his book. I read his first paper in the Cornhill, giving a very dismal picture of the primaeval vegetation (supposed solely Cryptogamic) of the globe, which I could have contradicted in several essential points.

I wish indeed you c[oul]d get the appointment to Epping Forest. I lent your pamphlets to Lady Lanerton⁴ (a Ponsonby, of Medhurst, Sussex, and an ancient friend & neighbour of Cobden's⁵) & I enclose a note from her about it.— Mr. Slater has lost this severe winter thousands of young exotic trees — N.[orth] American, Japanese, &c. I will give him your lembranças.

What an awful state the country is getting into! "War and Wasteful expenditure" seems to be the keynote of our Gov[ernmen]t.

The ground has been white with snow the last 8 days — it is snowing as I write — and all still waters are frozen.

With kind regards to Mrs. Wallace & your children.

I am, as ever | Yours faithfully | Rich[ar]d Spruce. [signature]