52 LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



long grass under the tree, apparently a green grasshopper was flutter- 

 ing, as though it had got entangled in it. When you once fancy that 

 the thing you are looking at is really what you take it for, the 

 more you look at it the more you are convinced that it is so. In 

 the present case this was a grasshopper beyond all doubt, and 

 nothing more remained to be done but to wait in patience till it 

 had settled, in order that you might run no risk of breaking its 

 legs in attempting to lay hold of it while it was fluttering. It still 

 kept fluttering ; and having quietly approached it, intending to make 

 sure of it behold the head of a large rattlesnake appeared in the 

 grass close by : an instantaneous spring backwards prevented fatal 

 consequences. What had been taken for a grasshopper was in fact 

 the elevated rattle of the snake in the act of announcing that he was 

 quite prepared, though unwilling, to make a sure and deadly spring. 

 He shortly after passed slowly from under the orange tree to the 

 neighbouring wood on the side of a hill : as he moved over a place 

 bare of grass and weeds, he appeared to be about eight feet long. 

 It was he who had engaged the attention of the birds, and made 

 them heedless of danger from another quarter : they flew away on his 

 retiring ; one alone left his little life in the air, destined to become 

 a specimen, mute and motionless, for the inspection of the curious 

 in a far distant clime." 



From Pernambuco, Waterton sailed for Cayenne. He examined 

 its fine gardens, and made a good many observations in Natural 

 History. One evening, while sitting under a cinnamon tree, a branch 

 fell upon his head. The insect, which the colonists call a knife- 

 grinder, had cut the branch half through, when the weight of the 

 foliage snapped it off. This bough he brought home. An expedi- 

 tion in search of tropic birds was foiled by bad weather. Waterton 

 proceeded by way of Paramaribo to Demerara, where he spent six 

 months studying the habits of the birds of the forest, and preparing 

 the skins of the most brilliant. He stuffed more than two hundred 

 upon a plan which he had himself invented. 



He had observed that every specimen in every museum he had 

 visited was shockingly deformed. The skins were shrunk, the lips 

 and nose of the quadrupeds shrivelled up, and altogether the skin 



