The Zoologist — November, 1867. 999 



lovely (one hundred and twenty-one different species are found in one 

 single locality, S. Theresa hill, the scene of our first walk) ; palms, 

 cocoa-nuts, flowers, orchids, flowering trees of all forms and hues and 

 scents ! and all these not as in an English greenhouse, single gems in 

 the midst of mere ordinary woodlands, but the component parts of a 

 vast expanse of forest scenery, each individual item of which is just as 

 beautiful as they ! I cannot describe it ; I can only (as I often do) just 

 s.it down in the midst of it all and look and think and feel it." — p. 110. 



" It is nearly eleven o'clock at night. Gray has been iu his room 

 an hour; I am sitting writing in the airiest of apparel at an open 

 window, the fireflies are gleaming in the dark like stray atoms or 

 sparks of animated sunshine ; the mosquitos are (thanks, perhaps, to 

 the open window, only it is so deliciously cool) in heavy clouds and full 

 chorus of harmonies (not all unisonous) round my lamp ; cockroaches 

 as big as mice are racinig noisily across the Indian matting; strange 

 sounds come to my ears from the distant forests, fleas are biting me, 

 and every now and then a flop against the lamp announces the visit 

 of a beetle. What can mortal man enjoy more?" — p. 111. 



The following sketch of the effects of a Brazilian sunrise at Barrera 

 is very delicious, and makes one long for a sight of tropical nature in 

 its home : alas ! how different from what we see of it when transferred 

 to our own dull clime ! 



" Then the glorious sun came out ! and the whole valley in one 

 instant woke up to reply to his greeting — everything laughed with 

 brightness ; trees got up a little crisp fresh rustling in their foliage, 

 flowers brought out their brightest colours, bushes and vegetation all 

 at once dressed themselves in gorgeous suites of countless diamonds ; 

 even the spiders' webs, with their geometric tracery, are decked with 

 diamond drops ; one or two sensible, sober-minded little mites of ants 

 came out from under a twig, where they had been belated last night, 

 just like ourselves, and, sunning themselves in a cozy nook, stretched 

 their limbs and combed out their antennae ; and in the midst of this 

 fairy land wandered a happy mortal with a glass tube in his fingers, 

 picking up from bush and flower pretty little beetles, pleasant 

 souvenirs in after days of a wretched resting-place, reconciled again to 

 existence, and thinking how strange it is that man at his lowest estate 

 can mar the most lovely scenes of nature, and that man at his highest 

 estate can make the wilderness blossom as the rose." — p. 117. 



I must conclude these extracts with one about u ants," which shows 

 that these creatures are as diverse in their dispositions and propen- 

 sities as man himself. 



"The ants abound ! Brazil is one great ants' nest ! they are of all sizes 

 and dispositions : some are a plague to us in the house, for they will 

 come at nights and prey on the insects in our store-boxes; some are 



