WCP6720

[1] [p. 225]

BARRA DO RIO NEGRO, Sept. 24, 1851.

I trouble you with a letter to ask you to compare the specimens of Palms I have sent to your museum with the Plates, etc., in Martius's¹ great work² and give me your opinion on them. I can find no one who will talk to me about Palms, and I am now coming among some that are exceedingly interesting. It is true that they are extremely difficult to collect and preserve. A prickly palm gathered in the depths of the forest at a distance from one's canoe is a load for one man, and an exceedingly unpleasant one, for one's hands are almost constantly required to cut and pull aside the twiners that obstruct the way. The Mirití which [2] [p. 226] grows here in the centre of the continent is possibly distinct from the maritime species, but as a spadix is a load for two men, specimens are quite beyond the reach of a traveller like myself. However, notwithstanding all the difficulties that lie in my way, I feel that it would be quite a sin to leave so many fine things altogether unnoticed. Higher up the Rio Negro I am certain to find abundance of new palms. Mr. Wallace has just come down from the frontier and brought with him sketches of several palms, of which I have no doubt many are quite new. There are at least two large Mauritias quite distinct from any described by Martius.…

I am now describing completely every palm I find, and I hope to sketch the greater part of them, so that, with the aid of the specimens I send to England, I hope some day to be able to work them up. I am now familiar with the aspect of all the commoner palms, but I have learnt that it is very unsafe to trust to the native names for the species, these names being, in fact, in most cases generic; I may instance Assaí, Bacába, Marajá. The palm called Bacába at Pará³ and Santarem⁴ is not the Oenocarpus Bacaba but the Oe. disticha. The number of Marajás is endless.⁵

I find ferns very scarce here in the interior. I have got a few interesting species near the Barra⁶, but they are so scarce that of some of them I have taken every individual I met with. Surely I shall find them more abundant up the Rio Negro.