1821.] Notes written during a late Residence at Buenos Ayres. 21 1 
winter, and many other kinds of birds 
that would require a naturalist to de¬ 
scribe them. 
The smaller tribes of birds are very 
numerous, and beautiful; one is all 
black, another all black except the 
wings, which are milk white. There 
are two or three beautiful species of 
turtle dove, one of which is little larger 
than a sparrow. Oh ! for a Bewick, to 
depict and describe them. I have seen 
but two humming birds, and believe 
that full nine tenths of the inhabitants 
have never seen one at all. 
Serpents of different kinds are 
numerous in the country, some poison¬ 
ous ; a very few frogs and those small; 
toads in immense numbers ; some slugs 
but no snails. 
Of insects, the most common and 
troublesome are dies and fleas, which 
swarm in every place during the sum¬ 
mer ; the flies soil every thing, covering 
fruit or sugar in an instant. Fleas 
abound in the streets and in the houses, 
and are an excessive annoyance. The 
only way of keeping them out of a 
house, is to wash the floors continually, 
but this is too much trouble for a 
Spaniard. In the autumn, in some 
situations,mosquitoes are troublesome; 
in the town there are very few of them. 
Ants abound, and do a great deal of 
injury in houses, gardens, fields, &c. 
Fire flies are common, as are glow¬ 
worms ; there are a few large humming 
bees, but the domestic bee is unknown. 
This might certainly be introduced 
with advantage, and wild honey is 
found in Paraguay. Spiders are con¬ 
sidered venomous, as is the cientopie ; 
a few small scorpions are found. 
Fish are of many kinds, generally 
good, and different from those of Eu¬ 
rope. They are all caught in fresh water, 
except some mullet, which are brought 
from a salt lake, twenty-five leagues 
back. Fishing, like every thing else 
in this country, is done on horse¬ 
back, to which mode the shallowness 
of the water is very favourable. Two 
men, mounted on horses used for the 
purpose, carry out a long net to a great 
distance, perhaps half a mile from the 
shore, they then separate the length of 
the net, and begin hauling it to the 
beach, where carts are waiting to carry 
away the fish, which are generally 
abundant. Few markets are supplied 
with fisli better or cheaper than this. 
The climate is one of the finest in 
the world ; its salubrious air has given 
mime to the town. It is little if at all 
subject to sudden changes. The greatest 
heat I ever knew, was 93° -at three in 
the afternoon, in January; the least 
was 26°, at seven in the morning, in 
August. But these extremes are very 
rare. The summer months; December, 
January, and February, are very fine 
weather, the heat being tempered! by a 
delightful breeze, which blows from 
the river every evening, and sometimes 
the greater part of the day. An occa¬ 
sional tempest purifies the air, and the 
rain refreshes the ground. The thunder 
is often extremely loud, and the light¬ 
ning sometimes kills men, frequently 
cattle and horses. 
From the nature of the soil, and the 
continual winds, the dust is troublesome 
in those months; in the winter the mud 
is equally so. 
June and July are the most unplea¬ 
sant months, not so much from the 
cold, as from the continual mists and 
fogs which then prevail. On the whole, 
however, no climate but that of Chill 
excels it. Occasionally in a winter’s 
morning, ice may be seen of the thick¬ 
ness of a dollar, but by noon it is all 
melted away. 
Instances of longevity are numerous. 
There 1 ived many years in the hospital 
of the Residencia , where he died at the 
age of 115, on the 18th April, 1815, 
Diego Antonio Fernandez , he was a 
native ol the village of Santo Domingo 
de la Calzada , in Old Castile. To the 
last day he walked well and his voice 
was strong,, though' both his hearing 
and sight were impaired. He had been 
fifty years in the country, and had 
been a soldier nearly all his life. 
About the same time was buried in 
the church of Santo Domingo , a native 
of the name of Goelea, aged 127 years;; 
he had been married three times,, and 
left 45 or 46 children and descendants. 
Pinkerton’s Geography, ed. 3d, Lon¬ 
don, 1811. His , account of Buenos' 
Ayres is antiquated and full of errors. 
The same maybe said of that now pub¬ 
lishing in the Edinburgh Gazetteer. 
Pinkerton says, the government of the 
Spanish colonies has always been con¬ 
ducted with superlative prudence; 
whereas, it was a most hateful and 
stupefying tyranny, and of the most 
superlative jealousy. It was once 
wished to establish here a college of 
arts and sciences, bud the Spanish go¬ 
vernment stopped the design, saying 
tliat there was no necessity in Buenos 
Ayres, for any other instruction than 
such as was sufficient to qualify a young 
man 
