May 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE EUROPEAN SILURUS. 445 



South America being usually far more energetic and independent than 

 the Indian, and, though less apathetic, inclined to be lazier. Near 

 Guayaquil, where the sambos have generally much more of the 

 African than the Indian in their blood, very great difficulty is often 

 experienced in getting hands to work the farms ; and yet the sambo 

 will work zealously on his own account on a plot of ground rented from 

 the white man, although his gains are often far below what he might 

 earn by working for his patron as a day labourer. Nearly the whole of 

 the famed tobacco of the river Daule, which is largely consumed in 

 Ecuador and the neighouring republics, is grown on small holdings 

 along the vega, rented and cultivated by sambos and mulattos. Cotton 

 also is raised by the same class of men, in small patches, which I 

 understand have been this year much multiplied ; although it might be 

 impossible to obtain the hands needed for working any large plan- 

 tation of either cotton or tobacco. I think that, by a similar plan, much 

 work might be got of the people of colour in our West Indian colonies, 

 if they had only an object to work for. At Guayaquil the sambo is 

 ambitious of being well drest, — no white man puts on a more finely- 

 embroidered or a more spotlessly white shirt than he does on Sundays 

 and holidays, and his straw hat has perhaps cost him an ounce of gold. 

 He likes, too, to see his wife and daughters dressed in gay silks, and 

 decked with gold ornaments. With this taste for luxury, he is content 

 to inhabit a miserable rancho. If he could be brougbt to feel the need 

 of a neat house and a comfortable home, and of a little more education 

 (of which he is by no means wholly destitute), he would have to exert 

 all his powers to enable him to acquire them, and would rise immensely 

 in the scale of civilisation. As it is, he cannot obtain the luxuries he 

 covets without working to some extent, and his industry — like all 

 industry rightly applied — tends to increase the comforts and luxuries 

 of the whole human race. 



THE EUROPEAN SILURUS.* 



BY M. C. COOKE. 



A new fish has been introduced into our waters from Wallachia. 

 The Acclimatisation Society has received fourteen living specimens 

 from Sir Stephen Lakeman's estate at Kapochein, or rather from the 

 river Argich which flows past that nobleman's Wallachian domain. A 

 brief notice of these visitors may prove acceptable as an adjunct to the 

 portrait which is on the next page. It should be premised that this 



* From " Science-Gossip," a new and very interesting publication. 



