218 
LETTERS FROM 
nightshade, with blue flowers and yellow 
berries as large as an Orlean plum. The 
latter plant was a strong branching shrub, 
four or five feet in height. We saw many 
swallow-tailed butterflies, and one or two re¬ 
sembling our brimstone-butterfly, but dis¬ 
tant. Green lizards were very abundant, 
and appeared rather larger than those of 
Malta. We saw one running up the wall of 
a house with a large white butterfly in his 
mouth. 
We remained at Syracuse three days, but 
we added very little to our collections there, 
as we did not think it worth while to unpack 
all our apparatus for so short a time. At a 
later season of the year I think it would be a 
good station for a naturalist. We collected 
/ 
a few sea-shells, and on the walls of the 
hotel I found two or three specimens of a 
pretty little helix, like h. melitensis , but 
