ORDER CHELONIA. 29 



marshes, nourish in our European climates the majority of 

 those reptiles which breed among us, it is necesbary to study 

 this class of beings in their natural empire, in the deep 

 morasses, the lakes, the rivers, the wastes of uncultivated 

 vegetation, where every thing concurs to their development 

 and multiplication, under the burning suns of tropic and 

 equatorial regions. We shall avail ourselves here of an 

 eloquent description relative to this subject, given by BufFon, 

 in his history of the Screamer, or KamicM, a bird already 

 described in our account of the order Grallae. 



" We have already painted," says this delightful writer, 

 " the arid deserts of Arabia Petrea, those naked solitudes 

 where man has never yet breathed beneath the shade ; where 

 the earth, destitute of verdure, presents no subsistence to 

 quadruped, to bird, or to insect ; where all appears dead, 

 because nothing can be born, and because the element neces- 

 sary to the developement of the germs of every being, whether 

 animal or vegetable, far from impregnating the earth with 

 streams of living water, or fertilizing it by penetrating 

 showers, does not even moisten its surface with a simple dew- 

 To this picture of absolute drought, in a land too ancient, let 

 us oppose that of the mighty morasses and inundated savan- 

 nahs of the New Continent. Here we shall behold the excess 

 of that of which we there lamented the deficiency. Rivers 

 of immense breadth, such as the Amazons, La Plata, and the 

 Orinoco, rolling onward their huge and foaming billows, 

 seem to menace the earth with invasion, and attempt to over- 

 whelm it altogether. From them originate stagnant waters, 

 which spreading far and near, cover the alluvial slime which 

 they have deposited. These vast marshes exhaling their 

 va})oiu-s in fetid fogs, would soon communicate the infection 

 of the earth to the air, did not their exhalations quickly fall 

 again in precipitous rains, or become rapidly dispersed by 

 storms and hurricanes. These regions, alternately inundated 



