80 
WANDERINGS IN 
SECOND 
JOURNEY 
Torrid 
Zone. 
Flying 
fish. 
of mischief, very luckily for the world, he got thrown 
: out of the box, and tumbled into the river Po. 
Some of our modern bloods have been shallow 
enough to try to ape this poor empty-headed coach¬ 
man, on a little scale, making London their Zodiac. 
Well for them, if tradesmen’s bills, and other trivial 
perplexities, have not caused them to be thrown into 
the King’s Bench. 
The productions of the torrid zone are uncom¬ 
monly grand. Its plains, its swamps, its savannas, 
and forests, abound with the largest serpents and 
wild beasts ; and its trees are the habitation of the 
most beautiful of the feathered race. While the 
traveller in the old world is astonished at the elephant, 
the tiger, the lion, and the rhinoceros, he who 
wanders through the torrid regions of the new, is 
lost in admiration at the cotingas, the toucans, the 
humming-birds, and aras. 
The ocean, likewise, swarms with curiosities. 
Probably the flying-fish may be considered as one 
of the most singular. This little scaled inhabitant 
of water and air seems to have been more favoured 
than the rest of its finny brethren. It can rise out of 
the waves, and on wing visit the domain of the birds. 
After flying two or three hundred yards, the in¬ 
tense heat of the sun has dried its pellucid wings, 
and it is obliged to wet them, in order to continue 
its flight. It just drops into the ocean for a moment, 
and then rises again and flies on; and then descends 
to remoisten them, and then up again into the air; 
thus passing its life, sometimes wet, sometimes dry, 
