290 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



country which he has made his home, rendered his 

 conversation interesting and instructive. 



Many EngHshmen seem to imagine that, at least as 

 regards material progress, distant countries, with the 

 possible exception of the United States, are much 

 less advanced than we are at home. I was led to an 

 opposite conclusion as far as the more advanced states 

 of South America are concerned, and I was struck by 

 one illustration of the fact that I encountered at 

 Paisandu. In the course of my long conversation 

 with Dr. French, we were three times interrupted by 

 the tinkling of a little bell connected with telephone 

 wires carried into his sitting-room. I learned that a 

 wire was carried from each of the chief estancias and 

 saladeros within a circuit of eight or ten miles from 

 the town. On each occasion advice was sought and 

 obtained as to some case of sickness or accident, and 

 it was impossible not to be struck by the great addi- 

 tion thus made to the usefulness of a skilful medical 

 adviser in country districts. With regard to this and 

 other applications of the telephone and the electric 

 telegraph, our backward condition may be explained 

 by the extraordinary fact that the English people 

 have tolerated the existence of a Government 

 monopoly, which, in many cases, acts as a prohibition ; 

 but in other matters, such as electric lighting, our 

 relative inferiority must be set down to the extreme 

 slowness with which new ideas germinate and reach 

 maturity in the English nature. 



1 w^as much interested by the information given to 

 me by Dr. French as to the frequent occurrence of 

 the fossil remains of large extinct mammalia in this 



