6408 Natural-History Collectors. 



be fearful, judging by a place or two where rain had fallen in the night. 

 I am most fortunate to come up in the dry season, for the road from 

 Honda is quite another business after a fortnight's rain ; man and beast 

 get bogged up to the neck, and every place is disgustingly shaky and 

 slippery. I forgot to say, when at the mines of Santa Ana, 1 captured 

 some magnificent and monstrous butterflies, six inches from tip to tip 

 (Morpho Adonis and M. Cytheris) ; I do not know which to admire 

 the most, the brilliant metallic blue of the former or the perfect 

 resemblance of the latter to the glittering, flickering flashes of the opal : 

 here they are much in request for drawing-room ornaments. One 

 thing we have here, the infinite beauty and glory of which never 

 satiates nor repeats itself — the wondrous sunsets, which lately have 

 been of singular splendour : a few evenings ago we had one I never 

 saw equalled ; the cool, deep blue of the East was set off with fine 

 white clouds tinted with pink, and then to the zenith gradually 

 changing to a deep gray ; descending westward this formed a mighty 

 arch from south to north, perhaps thirty degrees high at the centre, 

 fringed with delicate red and flecked with patches of the same colour ; 

 the open arch itself was like the very portal of paradise, all clear, pure 

 white silver, of dazzling brilliancy, whence came light, which, thrown 

 on the warm reddish yellow of the cathedral, combined so as to" give 

 it the most intense pure lemon-colour, standing in magic contrast 

 against the deep blue and purple-brown mountains behind. The 

 silver archway was groined with delicate lines of crimson, looking like 

 the tracings of the mason-work; right and left were golden clouds as 

 door-posts; below, all the buildings and the hills which bound the 

 plain were in darkness, with only here and there a turret sharply de- 

 fined against the silver brightness ; watching awhile its beauty from 

 the " Altozano, , ' > or terrace in front of the cathedral, gradually the 

 colours changed, less bright perhaps, but, from the increasing darkness 

 below, this was not sensible ; the silver gradually changed to gold, the 

 gray to greenish brown, whilst an intensely bright flame-colour marked 

 the place of the sun's disappearance ; so the changes went on without 

 visible alteration of form, through all the combinations of the rainbow, 

 until all was gone. Perhaps the sunset here is not so very much more 

 beautiful than in Europe; it may be, as I always walk on the 

 Altozano or to the suburbs about that time, that I take more notice, 

 but it seems to me that the colours are more vivid than they are in 

 England. The most striking thing, perhaps, about these glorious 

 sunsets is that it is absolutely dark on the ground whilst all this 

 wondrous play of light and colour goes on in the west ; you can see 



