218 Mexican Notes. [ZOE 
small inconspicous ones. Soon I came to a watermelon patch. It 
was a grassy field, with occasional spots cleared by the hoe, and in 
those places a few puny plants were growing, blossoms and young 
fruit being on some of the larger ones in January. A Wary white 
butterfly was fond of sunning itself on these bare spots, and chry- 
somelian beetles were preying upon the melon vines, doing the 
mischief they love so well to do. Beyond the enclosed fields 
about the town is the railroad leading to Tepec, now abandoned 
and overgrown with weeds and grass. Following this embankment, 
which runs out through a dense swampy jungle which is overflowed 
at high tide, I soon found some nice plants, and observed among 
the trees and about the shallow pools a great variety of lovely- 
plumaged birds—herons, ibis and egrets, and ten thousand other 
kinds quite new and strange, most of them very tame. But they 
were all safe, for I had no gun. At sucha time a collector wants to 
divide up his person into several individuals, and send himself off 
in various directions after various objects of interest; it is a great 
pity to have such lovely objects run to waste entirely. 
A league out Icame to a hacienda, the land having become higher 
and drier. Here were growing cane, coffee, cocoanuts, bananas and 
’ many other things. But I should think the people living there would 
need to be of cast iron to resist the malaria from that terrible swamp, 
and steel-plated to resist the clouds of biting insects. The place, 
lovely in its tropical fruits, was somewhat interesting in its wild 
plants, but furnished no desirable insects, and as the sky had become 
overcast, threatening rain, the trip was ended. The next day was 
also rather Overcast, but warm. I went out on another road toward 
the hills to the east. One has to goinaroad. The whole country 
is So overgrown and covered with tangled thickets and thorny jun- 
gles, with plenty of vicious cactus plants, that the hunter must goin 
some path or road; he cannot g0 across lots anywhere, as in the 
