extreme beauty when separately considered. Each leaf was about 18 in. in
length; but nature, always attentive to elegance, to obviate heaviness,
had at the end of a very strong leaf-stalk divided it into five, and
sometimes seven, leafits, of unequal length, and very long oval shape,
finely serrated. These leafits were disposed in a circular form,
radiating from the centre, like the leaves of the fan palm, though
placed in a contrary plane to those of that magnificent ornament of the
tropical forests. The central, or lower, leafits were the largest, each
of them being 10 in. in length, and 4 in. in breadth, and the whole
exterior of the foliage being disposed in an imbricated form, having a
beautifully light and palmated appearance. The flowers, in which the
tree was profuse, demand our deep admiration and attention: each group
of them rose perpendicularly from the end of the young shoot, and was in
length 14 in., like a gigantic hyacinth, and quite as beautiful, spiked
to a point, exhibiting a cone or pyramid of flowers, widely separate on
all sides, and all expanded together, principally white, finely tinted
with various colours, as red, pink, yellow, and buff, the stamina
forming a most elegant fringe amid the modest tints of the large and
copious petals. These feathery blossoms, lovely in colours and stately
in shape, stood upright on every branch all over the tree, like flowery
minarets on innumerable verdant turrets. We had thus the opportunity of
ascertaining that it belonged to that class of Linnaeus consisting
entirely of rare plants the Heptándria, and the order Monogynia; the
natural order Trihilàtae; and the _A'_cera of Jussieu.

The natives informed us that the fruit ripens early in autumn, and
consists of bunches of apples, thinly beset with sharp thorns, each when
broken producing one or two large kernels, about 2 in. in circumference,
of the finest bright mahogany colour without, and white within; that the
tree is deciduous, and just before its fall changes to the finest tints