the tree just described. It is not here the solemn shades of forests,
the majestic course of rivers, the mountains wrapped in eternal snow,
that excite our emotion. A few drops of vegetable juice recall to our
minds all the powerfulness and the fecundity of nature. On the barren
flank of a rock grows a tree with coriaceous and dry leaves. Its large
woody roots can scarcely penetrate into the stone. For several months
of the year not a single shower moistens its foliage. Its branches
appear dead and dried; but when the trunk is pierced there flows from
it a sweet and nourishing milk. It is at the rising of the sun that
this vegetable fountain is most abundant. The negroes and natives are
then seen hastening from all quarters, furnished with large bowls to
receive the milk, which grows yellow, and thickens at its surface.
Some empty their bowls under the tree itself; others carry the juice
home to their children.

In examining the physical properties of animal and vegetable products,
science displays them as closely linked together; but it strips them
of what is marvellous, and perhaps, therefore, of a part of their
charms. Nothing appears isolated; the chemical principles that were
believed to be peculiar to animals are found in plants; a common chain
links together all organic nature.

Long before chemists had recognized small portions of wax in the
pollen of flowers, the varnish of leaves, and the whitish dust of our
plums and grapes, the inhabitants of the Andes of Quindiu made tapers
with the thick layer of wax that covers the trunk of a palm-tree.* (*
Coroxylon andicola.) It is but a few years since we discovered, in
Europe, caseum, the basis of cheese, in the emulsion of almonds; yet
for ages past, in the mountains of the coast of Venezuela, the milk of
a tree, and the cheese separated from that vegetable milk, have been