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MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



descriptions most naturalists give of the surpassing beauty of 

 tropical vegetation, and of the strange forms and brilliant 

 colours of the animal world, that I had wrought myself up to 

 a fever-heat of expectation, and it is not to be wondered at 

 that my early impressions were those of disappointment. On 

 my first walk into the forest I looked about, expecting to see 

 monkeys as plentiful as at the Zoological Gardens, with 

 humming-birds and parrots in profusion. But for several 

 days I did not see a single monkey, and hardly a bird of any 

 kind, and I began to think that these and other productions 

 of the South American forests are much scarcer than they are 

 represented to be by travellers. But I soon found that these 

 creatures were plentiful enough when I knew where and how 

 to look for them, and that the number of different kinds of 

 all the groups of animals is wonderfully great. The special 

 interest of this country to the naturalist is, that while there 

 appears at first to be so few of the higher forms of life, there 

 is in reality an inexhaustible variety of almost all animals. I 

 almost think that in a single walk you may sometimes see 

 more quadrupeds, birds, and even some groups of insects in 

 England than here. But when seeking after them day after 

 day, the immense variety of strange forms and beautiful 

 colours is really astonishing. There are, for instance, few 

 places in England where during one summer more than thirty 

 different kinds of butterflies can be collected ; but here, in 

 about two months, we obtained more than four hundred 

 distinct species, many of extraordinary size, or of the most 

 brilliant colours. 



" There is, however, one natural feature of this country, the 

 interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated in a 

 single walk : it is the " virgin forest." Here no one who has 

 any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be 

 disappointed ; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single 

 direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and 

 height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a 

 hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, 

 the strange buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or 

 furrowed stems of others, the curious and even extraordinary 



