Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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I Have Most Frequently Found Only From Fifteen To
Twenty-Two Nuts In Each Fruit.
The second tegument of the almonds is
membranaceous, and of a brown-yellow.
Their taste is extremely
agreeable when they are fresh; but the oil, with which they abound,
and which is so useful in the arts, becomes easily rancid. Although at
the Upper Orinoco we often ate considerable quantities of these
almonds for want of other food, we never felt any bad effects from so
doing. The spherical pericarp of the bertholletia, perforated at the
summit, is not dehiscent; the upper and swelled part of the columella
forms (according to M. Kunth) a sort of inner cover, as in the fruit
of the lecythis, but it seldom opens of itself. Many seeds, from the
decomposition of the oil contained in the cotyledons, lose the faculty
of germination before the rainy season, in which the ligneous
integument of the pericarp opens by the effect of putrefaction. A tale
is very current on the banks of the Lower Orinoco, that the capuchin
and cacajao monkeys (Simia chiropotes, and Simia melanocephala) place
themselves in a circle, and, by striking the shell with a stone,
succeed in opening it, so as to take out the triangular nuts. This
operation must, however, be impossible, on account of the extreme
hardness and thickness of the pericarp. Monkeys may have been seen
rolling along the fruit of the bertholletia, but though this fruit has
a small hole closed by the upper extremity of the columella, nature
has not furnished monkeys with the means of opening the ligneous
pericarp, as it has of opening the covercle of the lecythis, called in
the missions the covercle of the monkeys' cocoa.* (* La tapa del coco
de monos.) According to the report of several Indians, only the
smaller rodentia, particularly the cavies (the acuri and the lapa), by
the structure of their teeth, and the inconceivable perseverance with
which they pursue their destructive operations, succeed in perforating
the fruit of the juvia. As soon as the triangular nuts are spread on
the ground, all the animals of the forest, the monkeys, the manaviris,
the squirrels, the cavies, the parrots, and the macaws, hastily
assemble to dispute the prey. They have all strength enough to break
the ligneous tegument of the seed; they get out the kernel, and carry
it to the tops of the trees. "It is their festival also," said the
Indians who had returned from the harvest; and on hearing their
complaints of the animals, one may perceive that they think themselves
alone the lawful masters of the forest.
One of the four canoes, which had taken the Indians to the gathering
of the Juvias, was filled in great part with that species of reeds
(carices) of which the blow-tubes are made. These reeds were from
fifteen to seventeen feet long, yet no trace of a knot for the
insertion of leaves and branches was perceived. They were quite
straight, smooth externally, and perfectly cylindrical.
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