234 The Zoologist— June, 1866. 



dominion, and the bottoms of the ravines are choked deep with fallen 

 trees, the indescribable tangle that grows everywhere binding it all 

 into a mass of leafy, thorny confusion, that must be seen and fell and 

 pushed through with aid of hatcliet to be appreciated. In one place I 

 had a big tree, seventy or eighty feet high, felled to get at a bees' nest. 

 The crash of this huge fellow down the hill-side into the bottom was 

 worth seeing and hearing. There was plenty of honey, but nasty and 

 and acidulous to my taste, of a small orange-coloured bee, very 

 vicious, whose venom appeared to lie in his jaws, not his tail; bites 

 like mad and raises sore blisters. Did not do anything to me ; I keep 

 out of the way in such cases. Talking of stings, I have got two or 

 three so-called " tiger ants" for you — are as big as a large wasp, black 

 with large spots and stripes of cream-colour; have a dreadful sting, 

 just like a wasp's, which generally produces fever: not uncommon 

 about my house at times. 



Agricullure of New Granada. — I have nothing new to read at 



present : I am waiting for Lyell on Adam, and want to see your review 



thereof. The principal matters of interest in the English papers seem 



to be the American war ; the war against sparrows, tomtits and 



company ; the attack on those who see no harm in plucking ears of 



corn on the Sabbath day ; the distance of the sun from the earth ; the 



proximate shut-up of the coal trade by the exhaustion of its article ; 



and the weary quarrel about iron ships and heavy guns. The tomtit 



question seems the most interesting : I have no doubt the birds do eat 



a power of fruit, as they have nothing else to do in July and August ; 



but what they do not eat would also be eaten if they did not walk into 



the caterpillars in the spring. One gentleman says they worried his 



gooseberries when lots of caterpillars were on them : no doubt, and 



so would anybody not an Annamite ambassador, who, I see, considered 



pickled grubs their greatest delicacy, and very nice too. If men 



will set up gardens among woods what can they expect? Here if you 



go in for backwood-clearings, your maize is no sooner in ear, green 



and delicious, than down come the monkeys, each carrying off six ears 



with ease in this manner — one in each hand, one in his mouth, one 



under each arm and one under his tail ! When the monkeys have 



walked off, a herd of cajuches and peccary pigs (or peccant pigs, more 



properly) arrive to grub all up, in order to bring down the crop to 



their snouts. Kill one, and the rest will soon persuade you that a tree 



is good lodgings. The pigs off, the parrots drop in by hundreds, and 



make a neat job of their share of it. Other birds are always at it, in 



