220 , TRAVELS IN BRAZIL. 



of the berries become ripe in the dry season, which 

 is the most favourable for gathering them. 



We several times went by the road from the Bay 

 of Bota-Fogo to the Lagoa de Roderigo Freitas, 

 about a league distant, on which are the royal pow- 

 der manufactory, and a nursery for foreign plants, 

 called the Botanical Garden. This road, which runs 

 sometimes on the slope of the granite mountain, 

 between beautiful flowering bushes of myrtles, 

 tournefortias, coronillas, and paullinias, on the 

 branches of which, we for the first time saw the 

 diamond beetle* alive, sometimes on the banks of 

 the sea, covered with lofty ferns t, tropical grasses, 

 and orchideae, affords the most agreeable variety, 

 and is much frequented, because many inhabitants 

 of the city have country-houses in that neighbour- 

 hood. The sea-coast, it is true, furnished us with 

 some addition to our collection of sea stars, sea 

 hedgehogs, shells, insects, and marine plants t ; but 

 even here we were struck with the observation, 

 which was everywhere confirmed in the sequel of 

 the journey, that these species of animals and plants, 

 so common on the coasts of the northern seas, are 

 less numerous in the torrid zone, and are more rare 

 in Brazil, than even in the East Indies. It almost 



* Curculio imperialis. 



f Acrostichum aureum, abounds here. 



Ophiurus ; Scutella sexforis Lam., quinqueforis Lam. ; 

 Echinus esculentus; Cicendela maritima nob.; Fucus Maximi- 

 h'ani Schrad., Opuntia L., Seaforthi Turn., sedoides Br. 



