xlv 



insect would immediately protrude its sucker, make a charge, 

 and if allowed draw blood. No pain was caused by the wound. 

 It was curious to watch its body during the act of sucking, as in 

 less than ten minutes it changed from being as flat as a wafer 

 to a globular form. This one feast, for which the benchuca was 

 indebted to one of the officers, kept it fat during four whole 

 months ; but after the first fortnight it was quite ready to have 

 another suck." 



The Galapagos Archipelago was visited between September 

 15th and October 20th, 1835, and though directly under the 

 equator it was remarked that both the fauna and flora were 

 dull. 



"With the exception of a wren with a fine yellow breast, and 

 of a tyrant flycatcher with a scarlet tuft and breast, none of the 

 birds are brilliantly coloured, as might have been expected in an 

 equatorial district. Hence it would appear probable that the 

 same causes which here make the immigrants of some species 

 smaller, make most of the peculiar Galapageian species also 

 smaller, as well as very generally more dusky coloured. All the 

 plants have a wretched, weedy appearance, and I did not see one 

 beautiful flower. The insects, again, are small-sized and dull- 

 coloured, and, as Mr. Waterhouse informs me, there is nothing 

 in their general appearance which would have led him to imagine 

 that they had come from under the equator. The birds, plants, 

 and insects have a desert character, and are not more brilliantly 

 coloured than those from Southern Patagonia ; we may, therefore, 

 conclude that the usual gaudy colouring of the intertropical 

 productions is not related either to the heat or light of those 

 zones, but to some other cause, perhaps to the conditions of 

 existence being generally favourable to life." .... 



" I took great pains in collecting the insects, but, excepting 

 Tierra del Fuego, 1 never saw in this respect so poor a country. 

 'Even in the upper and damp region I procured very few, excepting 

 some minute Diptera and Hymenoptera, mostly of common mun- 

 dane forms. As before remarked, the insects, for a tropical region, 

 are of very small size and dull colours. Of beetles I collected 

 twenty-five species (excluding a Dermestes and Corynetes, imported 

 wherever a ship touches) ; of these, two belong to the Harpalidce, 



