3928 The Zoologist— April, 1874. 



seelis an explanation in the "everlasting summer," the "fertile 

 soil," and the boundless abundance of "fruit and grain" with which 

 their country is blessed, and he thinks that hard work and hard 

 winters might have arrested the downward tendency of man. Is it 

 possible to carry out the idea? Does not the parallel fate of Nineveh 

 and Babylon, of Thebes and Carthage, of Greece and Rome, tell a 

 different tale ? May we not attribute all those phenomena which 

 form the staple of history to another solution, the operation of that 

 inexorable law of decay to which all mundane entities must submit, 

 whether individuals or empires, whether " the king-vulture-mounted 

 mora" of Essequibo that arrested the attention of Waterton, or the 

 canker-worm that was devouring its heart's core and battening on 

 its life-blood. 



" The fallen trunks of trees were a likely place for beetles, and as I had 

 brought a lantern with me, I stayed to examine them whilst Velasquez rode 

 on to get some food ready. At night many species of beetles, especially 

 lougicorns, are to be found running over the trunks, that lie closely hidden 

 in the day-time. The night-world is very different from that of the day." — 

 P. 173. 



These longicorns are Nature's appointed executioners; they 

 attack the tree in its prime and pride of life ; they feed on its 

 growing vitals, and when their allotted work is performed, when 

 life has ceased, then come a host of lauicUicorns, who, like vultures, 

 feed on the decaying carcase. The fallen tree, whether its fall be 

 induced by the axe or the beetle, strongly foreshadows the fall of 

 races and of empires: these phenomena are but portions of the 

 great scheme ; new trees, new enemies, new races, new empires, 

 succeed each other like the waves of a summer sea, each always 

 dissipating itself on the shore of time, losing itself among the 

 pebbles; we saw not whence it came, we see not whither it has 

 gone. 



I turn from dying races and worm-eaten trees to a scene full of life, 

 and vigour, and beauty, sketched by a master's hand. A truthful 

 scene, as no one will doubt, and a scene painted from the life, but 

 so painted that it may point a moral, or rather illustrate a theory. 



" The weather had cleared up, white cumuli only sailed across the blue 

 aerial ocean. The scene had no feature in it of a purely tropical character, ex- 

 cepting that three gaudy macaws were wheeling round and round in playful 

 flight, now showing all red on the under surface, then turning altogether, as 



