272 THE UNKNOWN. 



and unexplored country. It has been my lot to pursue 

 various branches of zoology, in re^jions where the ]3ro- 

 ductions were to science largely, to myself wholly, un- 

 known. In a rich tropical island, such as Jamaica, where 

 nature is i3rodigal in variety and beauty, and where, 

 throughout the year, though there is change, there is no 

 cessation of animal or vegetable activity, there was novelty 

 enough in every day's opima spolia to whet the expecta- 

 tion of to-morrow. Each morning's preparation was 

 made with the keenest relish, because there was the 

 undefined hope of good things, but I knew not what ; and 

 the experience of each day, as the treasures were gloated 

 over in the evening, was so different in detail from that 

 of the preceding, that the sense of novelty never palled. 

 If the walk was by the shore, the state of the tide, the 

 ever varying wave-washings, the diverse rocks with their 

 numerous pools and crannies and recesses, the cliffs and 

 caves, the fishes in the shallows, the nimble and alert 

 Crustacea on the mud, the shelled mollusca on the weed- 

 beds, the echinoderms on the sand, the zoophytes on the 

 corals, continually presented objects of novelty. If I rode 

 with vasculum and insect-net and fowling-piece into the 

 mountain-woods, there was still the like pleasing uncer- 

 tainty of what might occur, with the certainty of abund- 

 ance. A fine epiphyte orchid scents the air with fragrance, 

 and it is discovered far uj^ in the fork of some vast tree ; 

 then there is the palpitation of hope and fear as we discuss 

 the possibility of getting it down ; then come contrivances 

 and efforts, — pole after pole is cut and tied together with 



