Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. Ill 



sea-shore. The greater part is now what is called ruinate, being 

 covered with a dense and tangled mass of second growth, chiefly 

 logwood, interspersed with calabashes (Crescm^ia) and many fruit- 

 trees, such as the Avocada pear {Persea), orange-trees, mangoes^ 

 cocoa-nuts, Blighia sapida, guavas, papaws, and the diiFerent kinds 

 of Anona. About a dozen acres are kept open, in pasture, in which 

 there grow many flowering weeds, as Argemone, Stachytarpheta, 

 small Passiflorce, Asclepias, &c. Tlie fences consist of "dry 

 walls,^' that is, low walls built up of loose stones without cement. 

 Over these sprawl various kinds of Cereus, Aristolochia, Aroidece, 

 and beautiful Convolvuli, Ipomaa and Echites; while at their 

 bases spring up numberless bushes of Lantana, of several species, 

 always covered with their cheerful blossom, Cleome, and many pa- 

 pilionaceous and other flowering plants. The out-buildings of a 

 sugar-estate, as the mill, the boiling-house, &c., still stand, but 

 as mere skeletons ; the bare walls, the beams and rafters yet 

 remaining, but the planking of the floors and the shingles of the 

 roofs almost quite gone. These buildings present a curious ap- 

 pearance ; for with the singular rapidity of tropical vegetation, 

 the whole interior is occupied with young trees, already over- 

 topping the roof, and slender liancs hang down like cords from 

 one to another, or are thrown in loops over the beams ; while 

 elegant ferns of many kinds spring from every crevice of the 

 walls both within and without, and, curving outwards, depend 

 in the most graceful forms. Various insects have established 

 themselves in these ruined outhouses : the earthen floor of one is 

 pierced with the burrows of a red Sphex, numbers of which are 

 coming and going, and wheeling hither and thither close to the 

 ground all day long ; and in the dry dust of another are hun- 

 dreds of the conical pit-falls of a Myrmcleon larva, the manners 

 of which I found to agree exactly with those described by Reau- 

 mur. The soil of Bluefields is a friable whitish marl ; its ele- 

 vation may be from 50 to 100 feet above the sea. 



Bluefields Mountain. — Immediately behind the spot I 

 have been describing rises the loftiest elevation of the western 

 portion of Jamaica. The Peak, which I may have occasion to 

 mention once or twice, is estimated to be 2560 feet above the 

 sea, but this, as well as the summit of the ridge generally, is 

 covered with a dense and tangled forest, except that here and 

 there in isolated spots the negroes have chopped down and 

 "burned over" an acre or two, and planted cocoas [Colocasia) 

 and plantains. As they do not reside here, however, but in the 

 lowlands, visiting their mountain-gardens one day in a week, for 

 cultivation or for collecting the produce, the solitude is scarcely 

 broken, and the ])rinueval wildness of nature is scarcely affected 

 by these trivial intrusions. That giant. of the lowlands, the 



