74 NOTES OF A BOTANIST CHAP. 



August. I shall thus be able to gather a few 

 things which illness and fatigue obliged me to 

 leave at the time of my arrival. I have been on 

 the top of three mountains, and their vegetation 

 is so nearly identical, that I should hardly find 

 work at Tarapoto for a second year. . . . 



[The next letter from Tarapoto to Mr. Bentham, 

 dated April 7, 1856, is chiefly personal and botanical 

 gossip relating to his work and future travels. 

 After describing how a box from England was 

 damaged and nearly lost by the boat being wrecked 

 in the rapids of the Huallaga, he adds : " The diffi- 

 culty, risk, and expense of getting plants from here 

 all the way down to the mouth of the Amazon are 

 so great, that I see my Tarapoto collections are 

 not likely to repay more than the expense of 

 collecting." 



The letter concludes with a reference to the 

 news he had just received of the ravages of yellow 

 fever at the Barra, and then gives a short bio- 

 graphical note about a bird- collector, whose name 

 and specimens must be well known to most English 

 ornithologists. I therefore give it.] 



" I am sorry to say that Hauxwell is about per- 

 cliclo (lost) as far as natural history is concerned, 

 which is a pity, as no one has come here who puts 

 up birds so beautifully as he does. He has got an 

 Indian squaw and a child, and is turned ' merchant.' 

 I am surprised he writes English (with a small 

 taste of 'Yorkshire') so well as he does. His 

 parents removed from Hull (where he was born) 

 to Oporto when he was a little boy ; thence he 

 came out to the coast of Brazil as merchant's clerk, 

 and anon turned naturalist." 



