Hamlet Clark's Letters Home 167 



The steamer stopped for a day to coal at the St. Vincent Islands, 

 and Clark and his friend Gray took advantage of the opportunity 

 to entomologize, but with very trifling success : 



"There is nothing here where we have been working ; during the whole day 

 we have not taken more than twenty species among us. I worked as hard as 

 I could but there was hardly anything. In the ravines, they say, trees will grow, 

 bananas, canes, &c. ) ; and in the ravines, to any one who has the courage to 

 come and explore them, would be found, at the proper season, all the entomo- 

 logical faima of the island." 



The enthusiasm and enjoyment with which the two friends Clark 

 and Gray set themselves to study the natural history of the 

 neighbourhood of Rio is charmingly told, and the acuteness of 

 their observation, the innate talent of the naturalists, is constantly 

 and unconsciously displayed : 



" The forest trees, without being giants, were well-grown, and they had many 

 species of parasitic orchids on their trunks. I noticed that although parasitic 

 plants were in abundance, they seemed to affect special trees ; most of 

 the trees had their tnmks clean and bare ; but if any had a growth of para- 

 sites, that tree was probably covered with them from root to topmost 

 branches, and with several other quite different species. I accounted for this 

 in my own mind, not by any greater age of the tree, but by some probable 

 greater rugosity of the bark, which would give better holding powers to the 

 little parasitical roots ; at all events the effect was curious ; here was a tree 

 three or four times its proper diameter, bulging out like one of our ivy-clad ash 

 trees at home, but not with one special overgi-owth, but brilliant with scarlets, 

 and many-hued greens, while all around it were other trunks of trees clean and 

 bare ; why had not they, too, their coat of many colours?" p. 115. 



The following observation on fire-flies is interesting, and the 

 fact observed difficult of explanation : 



"This is a pleasant boarding-house in the very midst of the wood, with 

 virgin forest on all sides of us, and plenty of insects, even in the rainy season. 

 I have been out two or three evenings, hardly with the expectation of getting 

 anything, but for the sake of seeing the fire-flies. It is no figure of speech to 

 say that on still evenings, especially after a rainy afternoon, they eclipse the 

 stars ; their lights are of all sizes and magnitudes, and more than one colour. 

 The large Elateridaa of the genus Pyrophorus have a brilliant steady and very 

 bright light ; these are veiy difficult to catch, inasmuch as they sail slowly round 

 the tops of the high trees, looking exactly like wandering planets ; and others, 

 smaller but of brilliant lustre, fly hither and thither among the brushwood, also 

 Pyrophorus perhaps, at all events Elateridse, and not Lampyridae like our English 

 glow-worm, that haunt especially damp situations. On one side of the road 

 leading to the house is a deep gully, conducting a little stream to a small lake 

 of water ; this road on such evenings presents a marvellous sight — the whole of 

 the gully is lighted up with thousands of sparks. I am not romancing, they are 



