About and Above the Great Falls. 103 



broken off, and the slightest rough handling seems to 

 cause the little animal to part with it. 



Of inse6l forms, the commonest noticed was the splen- 

 did, broad and blue-barred Morpho achilles, but the 

 specimens, where they were close enough to be reached, 

 were frequently so scratched and so much jagged on the 

 edges of the wings, as to be scarcely worth the trouble 

 of keeping. The common speckled Anartia, and about 

 equally common yellow Callidryas, were frequently to be 

 seen ; while the lovely, black and green banded Urania 

 leilus, and the black-barred white Papilio protesilaus, 

 occasionally flitted past us down stream. 



The chief features of the vegetable life of the distrift — 

 those features which give the finishing touch, as it were, 

 to the more marked chara6teristics due to the natural 

 configuration of a country — were in themselves by no 

 means uninteresting, though to one familiar with the 

 river scenes of a tropical forest, they were, on the whole, 

 monotonous — except where the sward of a settle- 

 ment broke the line of forest by the waterside. Along 

 the swampy distrifts, the forest was composed of low and 

 densely crowded trees, among which the common water 

 mora, water wallaba, corkwood, etc., were abundant, 

 dotted here and there with various palm trees, and often 

 matted over with the thickly spreading coomaroo 

 creeper, brilliant with its pale mauve flowers. In the 

 higher distrifts, the gigantic mora, at times gorgeous in 

 its variously-coloured young foliage, towered above 

 all other trees by the waterside, among which trysil, 

 wallaba, dally, arrisouroo, hooboodie, etc., were frequently 

 to be distinguished, with the graceful manicole and other 

 palms peeping, as it were, through them. Scattered on 



