in 
Mr. P. H. Gosse on the Insects of Jamaica. 
sea-shore. The greater part is now what is called ruinate^ being 
covered with a dense and tangled mass of second growth^ chiefly 
logwood, interspersed with calabashes ( Cresce/i/m) and many fruit- 
trees, such as the Avocada pear {Per sea), orange-trees, mangoes, 
cocoa-nuts, Blighia sapida, guavas, papaws, and the different kinds 
of Anona. About a dozen acres are kept open, in pasture, in which 
there grow many flowering weeds, as Argemone, Stachytarpheta, 
small Passiflora, Asclepias, &c. The fences consist of ^'dry 
walls,^^ that is, low walls built up of loose stones without cement. 
Over these sprawl various kinds of Cereus, Aristolochia, Aroidea, 
and beautiful Convolvuli, Ipomcece and Echites-, while at their 
bases spring up numberless bushes of Lantana, of several species, 
always covered with their cheerful blossom, Cleome, and many pa- 
pilionaceous and other flowering plants. The out-buildings of a 
sugar-estate, as the mill, the boiling-house, &c., still stand, but 
as mere skeletons ; the bare walls, the beams and rafters yet 
remaining, but the planking of the floors and the shingles of the 
roofs almost quite gone. These buildings present a curious ap- 
pearance ; for with the singular rapidity of tropical vegetation, 
the whole interior is occupied with young trees, already over- 
topping the roof, and slender lianes hang down like cords from 
one to another, or are thrown in loops over the beams ; while 
elegant ferns of many kinds spring from every crevice of the 
walls both within and without, and, curving outwards, depend 
in the most graceful forms. Various insects have established 
themselves in these ruined outhouses : the earthen floor of one is 
pierced with the burrows of a red Sphex, numbers of which are 
coming and going, and wheeling hither and thither close to the 
ground all day long ; and in the dry dust of another are hun- 
dreds of the conical pit-falls of a Myrmeleon larva, the manners 
of which I found to agree exactly with those described by Reau- 
mur. The soil of Bluefields is a friable whitish marl ; its ele- 
vation may be from 50 to 100 feet above the sea. 
Bluefields Mountain. — Immediately behind the spot I 
have been describing rises the loftiest elevation of the western 
portion of Jamaica. The Peak, which I may have occasion to 
mention once or twice, is estimated to be 2560 feet above the 
sea, but this, as well as the summit of the ridge generally, is 
covered with a dense and tangled forest, except that here and 
there in isolated spots the negroes have chopped down and 
burned over^^ an acre or two, and planted cocoas [Colocasia) 
and plantains. As they do not reside here, however, but in the 
lowlands, visiting their mountain-gardens one day in a week, for 
cultivation or for collecting the produce, the solitude is scarcely 
broken, and the primseval wildness of nature is scarcely affected 
by these trivial intrusions. That giant of the lowlands, the 
