United States or Somalia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Near the banks of the Apure and the Portuguesa they rise to four feet in height, so that the jaguar can conceal himself among them, to spring upon the mules and horses that cross the plain. Mingled with these gramina some plants of the dicotyledonous class are found; as turneras, malvaceae, and, what is very remarkable, little mimosas with irritable leaves,* called by the Spaniards dormideras.

Many tonics and narcotics are antidotes more or less active; and we find these in families very different* from each other, in the aristolochiae, the apocyneae, the gentianae, the polygalae, the solaneae, the compositae, the malvaceae, the drymyrhizeae, and, which is still more surprising, even in the palm-trees.

Brown on the Proteacea, Transactions of the Lin. The Indian pilot led us across his garden, which rather resembled a copse than a piece of cultivated ground. We have observed, on the banks of the Orinoco and the river Magdalena, that the bombax, the carolinea, the ochroma, and other trees of the family of the malvaceae, are of extremely rapid growth.

The palm-trees, the scitamineae, the malvaceae, the trees with pinnate leaves, do not all display the same picturesque beauties; and generally the most beautiful species of each type, in plants as in animals, belong to the equinoctial zone. It is, however, the shade and humidity, rather than the distance from the coast, which oppose the migration of the cactuses southward.

Several germs, enveloped in the bulbs of the lily tribes, the embryo of the malvaceae, of the rhamnoides, of the pistacea, the viscum, and the citrus, the branches of some subterraneous plants; in short, vegetables transported into mines, where the ambient air contains hydrogen or a great quantity of azote, become green without light.