Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Descriptive Account of the Palo De Vaca, Or, Cow Tree of the Caracas: With a Chemical Analysis of the Milk and Bark
This enterprizing traveller thus continues Among the many cu rions phenomena which presented themselves to me in the course of my travels, I confess that there were few by which my imagination was more powerfully afi'ected than the Cow Tree. All that relates to milk and the cereal plants, inspires us with an interest, which is not merely that of the physical knowledge of things, but which connects itself with another order of ideas and feelings. We can hardly imagine how the human species could exist without farinaceous substances, and without the nutritious ?uid which the breast of the mother contains, and is appropriated to the condi tion of the feeble infant. The amylaceous matter of the cereal plants, the object of religious veneration among so many ancient and modern nations, is distributed in the seed, and deposited in the root of vegetables; while the milk we use as food, appears exclusively the product of animal organiza tion. Such are the impressions we receive in early childhood, and such is the source of atonishment with which we are seized on first seeing the Cow Tree. Magnificent forests, majestic rivers, and lofty mountains, clad in perennial snows, are not the objects which we here admire. A few drops of a vegetable ?uid impresses us with an idea of the power and fecundity of nature.
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