372 The Naturalist in La Plata. 
violet-like amidst cliistering leaves, and even when 
showing itself still “ half-hidden from the eye,” was 
thereafter to be only a tantalizing image in m^emory. 
Still, my case was not so hopeless as that of the 
imagined lapidary ; for liowever rare a species may 
be, and near to its final extinction, there must 
always be many individuals existing, and I was 
cheered by the thought that I might yet meet with 
one at some future time. And, even if this par- 
ticular species was not to gladden my sight again, 
there were others, scores and hundreds more, and 
at any moment I might expect to see one shining, a 
living gem, on TSTature’s open extended palm. 
Sometimes it has happened that an animal would 
have been overlooked or passed by with scant 
notice, to be forgotten, perhaps, but for some sin- 
gular action or habit which has instantly given it 
a strange importance, and made its possession 
desirable. 
I was once engaged in the arduous and monoto- 
nous task of driving a large number of sheep a dis- 
tance of two hundred and fifty miles, in excessively 
hot vreather, when sheep prefer standing still to 
travelling. Five or six gauchos were with me, and 
we were on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, 
near to a long precipitous stony sierra which rose 
to a hei2:ht of five or six hundred feet above the 
plain. Who that has travelled for eighteen days on 
a dead level in a broiling sun can resist a hill ? 
That sierra was more sublime to us than Conon- 
dagua, than Illimani. 
Leaving the sheep, I rode to it with three of the 
men ; and after securing our horses on the lower 
