THE STEAIT OF MAGELLAN. 241 



to a hundred feet, before detaching a single branch, and its 

 boughs, which ramify in a peculiar manner, are almost in- 

 variably bristling with epiphytes of various orders, which occur 

 frequently in such masses as almost to conceal the proper 

 foliage. Some beautiful flowers, and a large number of ferns, 

 including representatives of the genera Polypodium, Doryop- 

 teris, Gleichenia, Anemia, Lygodium, Lomaria,Hyme7iophyllumy 

 etc. etc., were obtained on this occasion, and I captured a 

 rather large spider of the genus Mygale, and found two speci- 

 mens of a land-shell of the genus Bulimus {B. Taunaisii), about 

 two inches and a half long. Travellers have sometimes 

 expressed a feeling of disappointment in the tropics, some- 

 what analogous to the exclamation of the Princess in Lander's 

 Gebir, " Is this the mighty ocean, — is this all ? " but for my 

 own part I can truly say that the scenery of Eio de Janeiro 

 fully surpassed my highest expectations, and never palled 

 upon me. I often realised, on the contrary, that such an 

 amount of beauty was crowded into a comparatively limited 

 area, as was almost impossible fully to appreciate. 



On the afternoon of the 3d of August, while walking 

 along the tank-road, I witnessed a very curious spectacle. 

 A large dark-coloured wasp, a little over an inch long, was 

 flying off with a green grasshopper, fully twice its own size. 

 It appeared to find its burden rather unmanageable, as it 

 took very short flights, resting at intervals. I endeavoured 

 to secure both captor and victim, but only succeeded in 

 obtaining the latter, which was not quite dead. On the 

 8th several of us landed, and went by steamer to Botafogo, 

 from whence we walked to the Botanical Gardens, which 

 were in a more tidy condition than when we visited them in 

 the previous year. On the trees we found several specimens 

 of a land-shell, the Bulimus auris muris, and we made a vain 



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