Evi] AND SYMBOLS. m 



cover the region that divides them forests the growth of 

 thousands of years, grand and noble, almost sublime. What 

 have we in this noble panorama, to mar the beauty and to chill 

 our joy 1 Why, where the shallow parts of the river disclose a 

 sandbank, the crocodile may be seen, with open jaws, and 

 motionless as a rock, its uncouth body often covered with 

 birds ; while the chequered boa-constrictor, its tail lashed round 

 the trunk of a tree, lies coiled in ambush near the bank, ready 

 to dart with certain aim on its prey. Rapidly uncoiling, it 

 stretches forth its body to seize the young bull, or some feebler 

 prey, as it fords the stream, and moistening its victim with a 

 viscid secretion, laboriously forces it down its dilating throat. 

 Let the lesson be learnt that in this world there is no scene 

 into which evil will not creep, no place where danger does not 

 lurk. vi. 



Evil Detected though in New Modes of Existence. 



It is not at all uncommon for honey to be unwholesome on 

 account of its having been collected by bees from poisonous 

 plants. The honey of Trebizond, for example, has long been 

 Notorious for its deleterious properties ; it poisoned the soldiers 

 of Xenophon during the famous retreat of the Ten Thousand. 

 Pliny too speaks of it ; and to this day its intoxicating effect is 

 frequently witnessed. It arises, no doubt, from the plants, 

 chiefly the Azalea pontica, from which the honey is gathered. 

 Mr. Barton has given us a similar account of the poisonous 

 quality of the honey gathered by bees from the savannahs of 

 New Jersey, where the calmia and the azalea are the principal 

 flowering shrubs. I* 



The Breaking Forth of Hidden Evil. 



Sometimes the moistened clay on the margin of the swamps 

 near the Orinoco will blister and swell slowly into a kind 

 of mound, until, with a violent noise, like the outbreak of a 

 small mud volcano, the accumulated earth is cast high into the 

 air. The spectator who comprehends the purport of this 

 strange scene immediately retreats, for he knows that the birth 



