THE COW-TREE OF SOUTH AMERICA.

We had heard of a tree, the juice of which is a nourishing milk; it is called the Cow-Tree; and we were assured that the negroes of the farm, who drink plentifully of this vegetable milk, consider it as a wholesome aliment.

All the milky juices of plants being acrid, bitter, and more or less poisonous, this assertion appeared to us very extraordinary; but we found, by experience, during our stay at Barbula, that the virtues of the palo de vaca had not been exaggerated.

This fine tree rises like the broad-leaved starapple.

Its oblong and pointed leaves, tough and alternate, are marked by lateral ribs, prominent at the lower surface, and parallel; they are some of them ten inches long.

We did not see the flower: the fruit is somewhat fleshy, and contains one, or sometimes two nuts.

When incisions are made in the trunk of the Cow-Tree, it yields abundance of a glutinous milk, tolerably thick, destitute of all acrimony, and of an agreeable and balmy smell.

It was offered to us in the shell of the tutumo, or calabashtree.

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 ropiness 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 major domo of the farm told us, that the negroes grow sensibly fatter during the season when the palo de vaca furnishes them with most milk.

Chrysophyllum cainito.

This juice, exposed to the air, presents at its surface, perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the atmospheric oxygen, membranes of a strongly animalized substance, yellowish, stringy, and resembling a cheesy substance; these membranes, separated from the rest of the more aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caoutchouc; but they undergo, in time, the same phenomena of putrefaction as gelatine.

The people call the coagulum that separates by the contact of the air, cheese; this coagulum grows sour in the space of five or six days, as I observed in the small portions which I carried to Nueva Valencia.

This extraordinary tree appears to be peculiar to the Cordillera of the coast, particularly from Barbula to the lake of Maracaybo.

Some stocks of it exist near the village of San Mateo, and in the valley of Caucagua, three days' journey east of Caraccas.

At Caucagua, the natives call the tree that furnishes this nourishing juice the Milk-Tree, (arbol de leche).

They profess to recognise, from the thickness and colour of the foliage, the trunks that yield the most juice, as the herdsman distinguishes, from external signs, a good milch cow.

It seems, according to Mr. Kunth, to belong to the Sapota family .

The Sapota is a genus of trees, (Hexandria Monogynia,) anciently called Achras, commonly translated the Wild Pear, of which four species are enumerated in Martyn's Miller. 1st, Mammee Sapota, otherwise called, Nippled Sapota, or the American Marmalade, from which a marmalade is made like that of quinces.

It is planted in the gardens in most of the West India Islands. 2nd, Common Sapota, with a fruit larger than a quince, of a delicate mellow taste.

All the tender parts are full of a milky juice, extremely harsh, and bitterish: but the fruit though full of this while young, is very sweet and agreeable when it ripens.

3rd, Clovenflowered Sapota.

All the herbaceous parts of this tree are milky.

Cultivated in Malabar, the fruit of which is of the size and form of the olive, succulent, of a sweetish acid flavour.

4th, Willow-leaved Sapota. No part of the tree is milky: called in Jamaica , White Bully Tree, or Galimeta-wood: it is reckoned good timber.

Amid the great number of curious phenomena which have presented themselves to me in the course of my travels, I confess there are few which have so powerfully affected my imagination as the aspect of the Cow-Tree.

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 in 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 nourishing milk.

It is at the rising of the sun that this vegetable fountain is most abundant; the blacks 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 near the tree itself, others carry the juice home to their children.

We seem to behold the family of a shepherd, who distributes the milk of his flock.---- Humboldt's Personal Narrative.