125 
Chap. YIII. — B. S.] THE INDIANS OP CHONTALES. 
from cultivation, and drive the native flora off the 
field. The same is true of Australian plants; and 
this contrasts strangely with the extraordinary rapidity 
with which European plants spread in the southern 
hemisphere, supplanting in New Zealand, New Hol¬ 
land, etc., the native vegetation. “ Hitherto,” says 
Dr. Hooker, “no consideration of climate, soil, or 
circumstance has sufficed to explain this phenomenon.” 
If what I have traced out, that new arrivals have 
always the advantage over old, be a sound law, it 
ought to apply to this case as well as the others; and 
to all appearances it does. We know, from the re¬ 
searches of Unger, Ettingshausen, and others, that 
a vegetation very similar to, not to say absolutely 
identical with, that of the southern parts of the United 
States, existed in Europe at the Lignite period, and 
that a vegetation very similar to, if not absolutely 
identical with that of Australia, existed in Europe at 
the Eocene period. But we have no knowledge of 
the existence of a European Flora in either North 
America or in Australia, at any former geological 
periods. Plants from Australia and North America 
would therefore not enjoy in Europe the advantage of 
new-comers, but would rather be like wanderers re¬ 
turning to a country where their part has already been 
played out. 
You still see pure Indians in the Chontales Moun¬ 
tains, but they are not numerous, and are retiring 
into the solitude of the forest as fast as the white 
men, or the more numerous half-castes, approach. 
Twenty years ago there are said to have been many 
