CHAPTER III 



THE NATURALISTS OF BARTICA DISTRICT 



The part which Bartica district has played in science 

 is of considerable interest. Humboldt, Wallace and Bates 

 left Guiana unexplored. Watertori's researches were con- 

 fined to the lower Demerara River. As early as 1776 seri- 

 ous books on the natural history of British Guiana began 

 to appear, but like Bancroft's "Essay" these are of only 

 casual interest, although their accounts of "torporific eels" 

 and "woods masters" make delightful reading. 



On September 25, 1835, Robert Schomburgk arrived 

 at Essequibo Point, later to be called His Majesty's Penal 

 Settlement, and spent about ten days collecting botanical 

 specimens, and preparing for his long expedition up country. 

 During the next decade both he and his brother touched 

 occasionally at Bartica. Richard Schomburgk in the first 

 volume of his "Reisen in Britisch-Guiana" tells of a short 

 sojourn at Bartika-Grove in 1841, and of the capture 'of 

 a sloth with its young on the neighboring island of Xaiku- 

 ripa or Keow Island as it is now called. Nineteen months 

 later he returned to Bartika, where he captured a beautiful 

 green whip snake Dryophis catesbyi, and noted that the 

 Penal Settlement had been established. 



In volume III of this same work, Schomburgk gives 

 a list of Mikroskopischcs Leben as found at Bartica in suc- 

 cessive layers of soil uncovered in a seven-foot hole. * The 

 remaining groups which he treats in these volumes, mol- 

 lusca, insects, birds, mammals and plants, are identified only 

 with general regions or physical zones, and with no more 



1 These are Polyffafttrica OaUioneUn distorts 



Phytolitharia Amphidiscus rotelln 



Lithasteriscus tuberculatus Sponyolithis fistnlosa 



Lithonti/lidium clavatum 8pongolithis foramino.w 



Lithosti/lidhnu mutilatnm SpongoUthi* fustis 



SpongoUthis acicularis Spongolithis obtusa 



