1864. ] Bares’s Naturalist on the Amazons. 183 
Darwin; and in his preface he tells us that it was Mr. Darwin’s 
opinions and wishes which were mainly instrumental in inducing him 
to commence the inditing of his book, and the same steady encourage- 
ment which strengthened his wavering resolution, and. helped him to 
accomplish the task. We shall not be surprised, then, to find the 
tendency of the book to be Darwinian. 
Mr. Bates made Paré his head-quarters, and his first volume is 
devoted to that neighbourhood, and his excursions up the Lower Amazons. 
The zoological richness of the immediate vicinity of Para itself is 
something almost beyond belief; and our traveller’s account of his first 
walk on the afternoon of his arrival is most graphic and stirring. 
Nevertheless he appears to have been at first struck with the generally 
small size and obscure colouring of the birds, and the similarity of 
appearance which the insects and birds of the open, sunny places bore 
to those inhabiting similar spots in Europe. The roadside vegetation 
consisted of tangled masses of bushes and shrubs, intermingled with 
prickly mimosas; but, notwithstanding this resemblance to European 
roadside features, there were, as may be supposed, many others which, 
at every step, reminded the travellers that they were in another world, 
The abundance of climbing trees attracted the attention in their first 
forest walk, and elicited a remark which is extremely interesting, viz. 
that these climbing trees do not form any particular family or genus ; 
there is no order of plants whose especial habit it is to climb ; but species 
of many, and the most diverse families, the bulk of whose members are 
not climbers, seem to have been driven by circumstances to adopt this 
habit. The orders Leguminose, Guttifere, Bignoniacer, Moracer, 
and others, furnish the greater number. There is even a climbing 
species of palm (Desmoncus). This remark is very characteristic of 
the tendency of Mr. Bates’s mind, which, though not to an undue 
degree speculative, yet sees, in observations like these, something more 
than the meagre fact which would be patent to all. He concludes the 
subject with the remark: “The number and variety of climbing trees 
in the Amazons forests are interesting, taken in connexion with the 
fact of the very general tendency of the animals also to become 
climbers.” (p. 49.) 
The quadrupeds and birds of the forest do not appear to the 
passing traveller, for, being excessively shy and widely scattered, the 
first impression which Mr. Bates received was that they were very 
few; he met with no tumultuous movement or sound of life, but 
describes it as a solitude, in which only at long intervals animals are 
seen in abundance, when some particular spot is found which is more 
attractive than others ; and this fact of distribution is one which we 
have ourselves observed, when, for example, scanning an expanse of 
sea-shore in search of the smaller marine animals, in situations where 
certain species are known to abound. The feeling inspired in the 
Brazilian forests was one of inhospitable wildness, only increased 
tenfold by the fearful and harrowing uproar made by the howling 
monkeys morning and evening. Other sounds are not so easily 
accounted for, even by the natives themselves, such as a sudden noise 
like the clang of an iron bar against a hard, hollow tree, or a piercing 
