Hamlet Clark^s Letters Home 171 



along the same track pretty nearly at the same time and yet each will bring 

 home many species that the other has not seen, and with this abundant variety 

 of species there is an absolute dearth of individuals. I have taken at Deal or 

 the Chesil Bank, or in many English localities, six or ten times as many insects 

 as I ever captured here in any given number of hours. At present insects don't 

 come to us by any means, we have to go to them at their ovra. homes. Geode- 

 phaga are at this altitude, 3CXX) feet, very scarce indeed, except the leaf-loving 

 arboreal Geodephaga, the lovely genera Lebia, Agra and their allies, Buprestida; 

 are rare too ; Elateridse, Curculionidoe, and Galerucidae are the dominant 

 groups for the moment : perhaps in Longicorns we take eight species every day, 

 and of course single examples : of Elateridae and Curculionidse I have often 

 taken enough in an hour to occupy the whole of the next morning if I were to 

 set them out after the fashion of precise order-loving symmetrical entomologists 

 in England. Water beetles are at present most scarce, or indeed impossible ; 

 we are in the midst of the rainy season, and violent rains, sometimes all day or 

 all night long, have so deluged everything that lies low that I cannot get at the 

 pools and brooks for the water." p. 139. 



Of tlie biting and stinging vermin, to which all tropical countries 

 are obnoxious, he had his fair, or rather more than his fair share. 

 Reptiles are not very troublesome in Brazil. They are plentiful 

 enough. Clark generally killed two or three a-day, for they lie 

 in just the very places that insects, and of course entomologists, 

 delight in, but such an occurrence as any one being bitten is very 

 rare. But if snakes are more feared than felt, ants, at least, make 

 themselves felt sore enough. 



" Brazil is one great ant's nest ; they are of all sizes and dispositions. Some 

 are a plague to us in the house, for they will come at night and prey on the in- 

 sects in our store-boxes ; some are a plague to us in the forests, they get inside 

 ones clothes and bite and sting ; others are a more serious evil still, vegetable 

 eaters, which will take a fancy to the leaves of some tree, and strip every leaf 

 off in one night. There are some long-jawed fellows that attack you by a jump, 

 not by the spring of their legs, but of their back-bone (only they have none. ) 

 They can fling themselves about a foot, and live under fallen timber and such 

 places : they are not so cruel as the little ones. The small species are my 

 terror ; their stings are like red hot needles, and they do not, like some others, 

 keep hold with their mouths, thus making only one red mark on the skin till 

 they are picked off. Much less do they nm off, having done their duty ; but 

 they go, say just two inches forward, and then go through the stabbing process 

 again. On one occasion I was in very great trouble ; inadvertently I stood still 

 for a moment examining the contents of my net, just in the midst of their run — ■ 

 a forage expedition of the whole tribe. I did not see them, nor indeed did I 

 look, so intent was I on my precious beetles ; when all at once I felt their sting 

 over a g^eat part of my body. The whole legion had walked up my boots. 

 The pain was really dreadful. But happily, when I had changed my quarters, 

 and thrown off in desperation half my clothes, a slave youth came by who 



