EXCERPT What we know of Amazonia, even of its physical existence, remains fragmentary. After more than a century of dogged research, which has yielded an invaluable body of literature comprising numerous monographs, it has still only been parcelled out from countless different points of view. Confronted with the most problematic of physical geographies, the human mind has inevitably adopted an analytic approach in response. Indeed, this is the only method capable of yielding the requisite elements for a subsequent synthesis. Yet it renders any view of the whole impossible. Even within the narrow niches of the various specialisms, further distinctions continue to proliferate. In fact, this is unavoidable. Geologists, at first wrongfooted by the illusion of structural uniformity, have not yet had enough time to establish a unified palaeontological horizon for Amazonia. Similarly, the combined lifetimes of a great many botanists, from Martius to Jacques Huber, have not been enough to alight upon all the potential specimens to be found in the shade of its palms…. We read their works; we are educated; we are edified. We welcome their finely detailed teachings on the infinite, highly distinctive faces of this land and yet, as we become more capable of distinguishing them from one another, our view of its general physiognomy becomes increasingly hazy. We are left with a great many sharp and vivid outlines, but they are for the most part highly disjointed. This enormity which we can only measure and partition eludes us; it exists on such a scale that it must be broken down in order to be evaluated; its magnitude can only be perceived once it has been enlarged using microscopes; it is an infinity to be administered in tiny doses, gradually, slowly, indefinitely, tortuously.…