Correspondence of Mr. Bates. 3449 



bestowed upon Madeira. Not that its natural productions are little 

 known ; I need only refer (among others) to the researches recorded 

 in Webb and Bertholet's great work on the Canary Islands for dis- 

 proof of this : yet even our yachtsmen during their summer cruises, 

 and invalids who may spend a winter there — if imbued with a love of 

 Natural History — will find ample scope for exercising it. Of the cli- 

 mate I need not speak ; living is cheap ; and a visitor will meet with 

 extreme civility among the peasantry, and find abundance of pleasant 

 society in Orotava and elsewhere, if he chooses to look for it. 



Believe me to be, 



Yours very truly, 



John Macgillivray. 

 To the Editor of the ' Zoologist.' 



Extracts from the Correspondence of Mr. H. W. Bates, now forming 

 Entomological Collections in South America. 



(Continued from page 3324). 



Santarem, Amazons, January 8, 1852. 

 I arrived here on the 26th of November, after rather a pleasant 

 voyage in comparison with previous trips of twenty days from Para. 

 I lost only one day in the necessary business of getting a house, cook, 

 &c, and proceeded to the woods after the Callithea Sapphira, but it 

 was about a fortnight before I got any good specimens. This is quite 

 a different ground from any station I have yet collected in, and takes 

 some time to know how to go to work. There is very little dense fo- 

 rest, the neighbourhood being entirely an arid, sandy, and gravelly 

 campo, with scattered forest, and only some narrow belts of wood ; it 

 is not a dead level of humid country, but undulating, and has pictu- 

 resque mountains within a day's walk. I think Wallace cannot have 

 worked the locality well, although he took, as I remember, the whole 

 series of species which he showed me at the Barra, and many butterflies 

 that I have not yet seen. 1 think he was here at a better season — the 

 fall of the river — which I know at Ega is the best season. What I 

 send you now is not so fine a collection as I could have wished ; I 

 have devoted myself to getting, first, a good series of the beautiful 

 Sapphira, which you wished for more particularly ; I hope whit I 

 send will satisfy you. Perfect specimens are very rarely to be met 

 X T 



