rvations, and in other scientific labors. In 1829 he
again became a traveller, and explored a wide district in Asia.
He died, in his ninetieth year, May 6, 1859. Few men have ever
done so much for the advancement of science, while his
published works of travel contain much that is of value from a
literary point of view. We extract a series of interesting
passages relating to scenery and incidents in the Orinoco
region. The first is descriptive of the remarkable "cow-tree."]

When incisions are made in the trunk of this tree, it yields abundance
of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, devoid of all acridity, and of
an agreeable and balmy smell. It was offered to us in the shell of a
calabash. We drank considerable quantities of it in the evening before
we went to bed, and very early in the morning, without feeling the least
injurious effect. The glutinous character of this milk alone renders it
a little disagreeable. The negroes and the free people who work in the
plantations drink it, dipping into it their bread of maize or cassava.
The overseer of the farm told us that the negroes grow sensibly fatter
during the season when the _palo de vaca_ furnishes them with most milk.
The juice, exposed to the air, presents at its surface membranes of a
strongly animalized substance, yellowish, stringy, and resembling
cheese.

[Illustration: LA GUAYRA, VENEZUELA]

Amidst the great number of curious phenomena which I have observed in
the course of my travels, I confess there are few that have made so
powerful an impression on me as the aspect of the cow-tree. Whatever
relates to milk or to corn inspires an interest which is not merely that
of the physical knowledge of things, but is connected with another order
of ideas and sentiments. We can scarcely conceive how the human race
could exist without farinaceous substances, and without that nourishing
juice which the breast of the mother contains, and which is appropriated
to the long feebleness of the infant. The amylaceous matter of corn,
the object of religious veneration among so many nations, ancient
and modern, is diffused in the seeds and deposited in the roots of
vegetables; milk, which serves as an aliment, appears to us exclusively
the produce of animal organization. Such are the impressions we have
received in our earliest infancy; such is also the source of that
astonishment created by the aspect of the tree just described. It is not