46 TEE NATURALIST IX NICARAGUA. [Ch. IV. 



like fruit, prickly acacias, and thorny bromelias. This 

 spiny character of vegetation seems to be charac- 

 teristic of dry rocky places and tracts of country liable 

 to great drought. Probably it is as a protection from 

 herbivorous animals, to prevent them browsing upon the 

 twigs and small branches when herbaceous vegetation is 

 dried up. Small armadillos abound near these rocky 

 knolls, and are said to feed on ants and other insects. 

 We had a long chase after one, which we observed some 

 distance from the rock, over the cracked and dried-up 

 plain : though it could not run very fast, it doubled 

 quickly, and the rough cracked ground made odds in its 

 favour ; but it Avas ultimately secured. Pigeons, brown 

 coloured, of various sizes, from that of a thrush to that of 

 a common dove, were numerous and very tame. One of 

 the smallest species alights and seeks about in the streets 

 of small towns for seeds, like a sparrow, and more bold 

 than that bird, for it is not molested by the children 

 rather, however, from indolence than from any lack of 

 the element of cruelty in their dispositions. After 

 crossing the plains we rode over undulating hills, here 

 called savannahs, with patches of forest on the rising 

 ground, and small plains on which grows the ternate-leaved 

 jicara (pronounced hickory), a tree about as large as an 

 apple-tree, with fruit of the size, shape, and appearance 

 of a large green orange, but growing on the trunk and 

 branches, not amongst the leaves. The outside of the 

 fruit is a hard thin shell, packed full of seeds in a kind 

 of dry pulp, on 'which are fed fowls, and even horses and 

 cattle in the dry season ; the latter are said sometimes to 

 choke themselves with the fruit, whilst trying to eat it. 

 Of the bruised seeds is also made a cooling drink, much 



