Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/368

 head of fronds with narrow leaflets of the same dark green hue as the rest of the forest. The stem is smooth, and about two inches in diameter; its height is not more than twelve to fifteen feet; it does not, therefore, rise amongst the masses of foliage of the exogenous trees, so as to form a feature in the landscape, like the broadleaved Murumurú and Urucurí, the slender Assaí, the tall Jauarí, and the fan-leaved Murití of the banks of the Amazons. On the shores of the main river the mass of the forest is composed, besides palms, of Leguminosæ, or trees of the bean family, in endless variety as to height, shape of foliage, flowers, and fruit; of silk-cotton trees, colossal nut-trees (Lecythideæ), and Cecropiæ, the underwood and water-frontage consisting in great part of broad-leaved Musaceæ, Marantaceæ, and succulent grasses: all of which are of light shades of green. The forests of the Rio Negro are almost destitute of these large-leaved plants and grasses, which give so rich an appearance to the vegetation wherever they grow; the margins of the stream being clothed with bushes or low trees, having the same gloomy monotonous aspect as the mangroves of the shores of creeks near the Atlantic. The uniformly small but elegantly-leaved exogenous trees, which constitute the mass of the forest, consist in great part of members of the Laurel, Myrtle, Bignoniaceous, and Rubiaceous orders. The soil is generally a stiff loam, whose chief component part is the Tabatinga clay, which also forms low cliffs on the coast in some places, where it overlies strata of coarse sandstone. This kind of soil and the same geological formation prevail, as we have seen, in many places on the banks of