366 MS. E. SPETJCE ON I]S"SECT-MiaBATIONS IS SOUTH AMEEICA. 



vegetable life, and not because I shut my eyes to the fact. In 

 proof of this, take tbe following note from my Journal, under 

 date May loth, 1857, written on the Bobonasa, a tributary of the 

 Pastasa, during my disastrous journey from Peru to Ecuador. 



" This morning, coasting along a low shore, our men spied a 

 small white Alligator sleeping in the sun, and killed him with their 

 lances. His stomach was distended by some food he had taken, 

 and on piercing it a snake's tail protruded. I laid hold of it and 

 drew out the snake, which was tightly coiled up. It was still alive, 

 though so much crushed below the head as to be unable to move 

 away. It was a land species, not venomous, yellow, with black 

 spots on the back, the body thick, passing abruptly into a short 

 slender tail, the entire length just 3 feet, and its destroyer no 

 more. Thus we go on preying on each other to the end of the 

 chapter. This poor snake, while watching for frogs among the 

 moist stones and roots, little dreamt he was about to serve for an 

 alligator's meal, nor the alligator that he would soon be eaten up 

 by Indians. The snake, however, died with an empty belly, while 

 the alligator had gotten his breakfast, which was some consola- 

 tion ; for it is a very ' Let-us-eat-and-drink-for-tomorrow-we-die ' 

 sort of life that all Grod's creatures (man included) live in this 

 wild region." 



I leave these disjecta memira in the hands of naturalists, hoping 

 that they may find among them some bone to pick. They bear on 

 many problems for which there do not yet exist materials, nor do 

 I possess the skill, requisite to arrive at a correct solution. On 

 one point only I am pretty clear, viz. that almost every kind of 

 animal now existing in Cisandine Tropical America might find 

 suitable food and lodging on any parallel between the southern 

 tropic and the mouth of the Orinoco ; which is as much as to say 

 that they would find everywhere, either the one plant they most 

 delight to feed on, or others which might suit them almost or 

 quite as well. The continual substitution of new forms encoun- 

 tered as we advance in any direction, does not, on a superficial 

 view, show much correspondence between animals and plants — a 

 fact which may be put otherwise, thus : — Suppose on a given area 

 at the foot of the Andes every species of some class of animals to 

 be distinct from those of the same class on an equal area at the 

 mouth of the Amazon, it does not therefore foUow that every plant 

 is different on the two areas ; we know, indeed, that such is not the 

 case. Yet the modifications that have been and are still in pro- 

 gress among vegetable forms must have some correspondence with 



