7512 Skulls. 



old, moss-grown stones ; out by the clear sunshine, and the sandy 

 shore with its heaps of drift-wood ; picking up Harpali, under great 

 chips of trees felled long ago by hunters ; detecting Cecina manchu- 

 rica, a new form of mollusk, under damp logs near the sea. Half 

 maddened by mosquitoes in the cool shade of crowded trees ; half 

 blinded by a gauze veil which I ship in despair, I can yet see 

 a strange insect in the air, flying like a longicorn. At risk of broken 

 shins I give chase and capture it, and find it a Myrmeleon-like Neu- 

 ropteron, with curious cup-shaped knobs at the end of lon^ antennas ; 

 I pass among the prostrate branches of a huge linden tree, lately 

 felled by fishermen and still laden with blossoms, from which bees are 

 busy extracting nectar; I come across bushes crowded with Canthari 

 of a pale red colour, with green head and thorax ; I hear an ominous 

 rustle of dead leaves on the dry elevated ground, and see the slow, 

 fat, undulating form of a great-headed adder, angrily making his way 

 from the invader of his solitude ; and now T suddenly encounter a 

 stone arch of uneven granite, rude, natural and Cyclopean, overgrown 

 with weeds, spotted with lichens, and half-concealed by a rank under- 

 growth, yet a veritable arch of rugged stone ; and I think of those 

 mystic Stonehenges and primaeval altars, built by white-robed, 

 bearded Druids, on plains and in sacred groves, full of mistletoe- 

 covered oaks, for purposes of mystic and most probably unholy 

 worship. Under my rude arch I creep with a childish kind of 

 pleasure, although to have gone round would have been far easier. 

 The strong lines of a spider's web, of unusual size, with a fat 

 bloated occupant in the centre, opposes my progress, but only for a 

 moment; Arachne's web is rent, and the "long-legged spinner" 

 placed in durance vile. At length, fatigued with my exertions, I 

 repose on a log near the shore, and observe, not very far off, a some- 

 thing in the drift, which turns out to be an imperfect skull of Steno, 

 a genus of true dolphins. 



To the north of Cape Notoro, in Amiva Bay, Saghaleen, is a rocky 

 and a lonely spot. It is a long, low point, projecting into the beauti- 

 ful wide bay, composed of great rounded rocks and drifted shingle. 

 Here, sheltered by the granite boulders, and concealed by coarse 

 grass and reeds, come the old and the sick of the seal tribe, which 

 inhabit these waters, to seek refuge from their fellows, and in peace 

 to breathe their last. The impress of their huge bodies may be 

 traced on the dead, soiled, flattened herbage. From the quantity of 

 bones strewn about the place T think this must be the chief cemetery 

 of the seals. It is, I have said, a wild and lonely spot. The only 



