JOSEl'ii MCDONOUGH Co. SCARCR & 1 ALHANY. NY. SL Presented to the LIBRARIES of the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO by Hugh Anson-Cartwright *£ & rt Jtfamilton, Qan. Romance of Natural Hiatorp BY P. H . GOSSE AUTHOR OF "Evenings at the Microscope," " Birds of Jamaica," "The Canadian Naturalist," etc. NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK, 1903 Preface. There are more ways than one of studying natural history. There is Dr. Dryasdust's way; which consists of mere accuracy of definition and differentiation; statistics as harsh and dry as the skins and bones in the museum where it is studied. There is the field-observer's way; the careful and conscientious accumulation and record of facts bearing on the life-history of the creatures; statistics as fresh and bright as the forest or meadow where they are gathered in the dewy morning. And there is the poet's way ; who looks at nature through a glass peculiarly his own ; the aesthetic aspect, which deals, not with statistics, but with the emotions of the human mind,— surprise, wonder, terror, revulsion, admira- tion, love, desire, and so forth,— which are made energetic by the contemplation of the creatures around him. In my many years' wanderings through the wide field of natural history, I have always felt towards it something of a poet's heart, though destitute of a poet's genius. As Wordsworth so beautifully says,— " To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." Now, this book is an attempt to present natural history in its aesthetic fashion. Not that I have presumed constantly to indicate — like the stage- directions in a play, or the "hear, hear!" in a speech — the actual emotion to be elicited; this would have been obtrusive and impertinent; but i have sought to paint a series of pictures, the iii PREFACE. reflections of scenes and aspects in nature, which in my own mind awaken poetic interest, leaving them to do their proper work. If I may venture to point out one subject on which I have bestowed more than usual pains, and which I myself regard with more than com- mon interest, it is that of the last chapter in this volume. An amount of evidence is adduced for the existence of the sub-mythic monster popularly known as "the sea-serpent," such as has never been brought together before, and such as ought almost to set doubt at rest. But the cloudy un- certainty which has invested the very being of this creature; its home on the lone ocean; the fitful way in which it is seen and lost in its vast solitudes; its dimensions, vaguely gigantic; its dragon-like form ; and the possibility of its asso- ciation with beings considered to be lost in an obsolete antiquity ; all these are attributes which render it peculiarly precious to a romantic natu- ralist. I hope the statisticians will forgive me if they cannot see it with my spectacles. P. H. G. Torquay, 1860. iv Contents. I. TIMES AND SEASONS. Winter in the Polar Regions— Aurora— Snowstorm — Snow on Trees — Beauty of Snow-drifts— Silver- Thaw — Opening of Spring- — Butterflies — Beetles — Fishes — Bees — Flowers — Spring in Canada — Leafing of Forest — Summer — Autumn — Autum- nal Colours in American Forests — Indian Sum- mer— Autumn in the Alps — Morning in New- foundland— Beaver-pond — Water-insects — Morn- ing in Jamaica — Awakening Birds — Daybreak in Venezuela— Sunrise in the Oural— Winter-Noon in England — Noon in a Brazilian Forest — Sunset in the Oural— Sunset in the Altaian— Mothing in a Summer Evening in England — Night on the Niesen— Night on the Jamaican Mountains- Night in Tropical Forests— Night-sounds in Ja- maica—in Brazil— on the Amazon— in Tobago —in Bur mah — Beast- voices in Guiana — Night on the Amazon — Night in Central Africa — Night-lamps — English Glow-worms — Fire-flies in Canada — in Alabama — in Jamaica — Luminous Elater, 11 II. HARMONIES. Distribution of Animals and Plants — Harmony of a Natural-history Picture — Gazelle in Deserts- Hyena in a ruined City — Siberian Stag in Altaian Gorge — Lammergeyer in the Alatou — Sperm-whales in Beagle Channel— Guanaco on the Andes— Reindeer on a Snow Fjeld— Burrell at v CONTENTS. the source of the Ganges — Elephant in South African Forest— Lions at an African Pool at Midnight — Butterflies in Brazilian Forest, 44 III. DISCREPANCIES. Life at great Depths of Ocean— Life in Snow- Trees growing in Ice — Life in the Sandy Desert — Life in a Volcano— Life in Dust at Sea— Life in Brine— Life in boiling Springs— Blind Fauna of Caverns — Oceanic Bird Stations — Land Birds at Sea— Insects at Sea— Insects at lofty Elevations —Flying-fish in Bed— Shoal of Fish in a Par- lour, 67 IV. MULTUM E PARVO. Coral Structures— Polypes— Lagoons— Beauty of Coral Island— Rate of Increase— Proposed Em- ployment of Coral-builders— Diatomacese— Im- mense Accumulations of Diatoms — Presence in Guano — Ocean Streaks — Food of Salpae — of Whales— Origin of Chalk-flints— Vermilion Sea— Green Water— Forests planted by Finches— De- structive Insects— Locusts — Timber-beetles — White-ants — Forest Scavengers in Brazil — Zimb —Tsetse— Golubacser Fly— Musquito, . . 90 V. THE VAST. Whales — Elephants — in India — in Africa — Condor — Exaggerations of Travellers — Great Serpents — Ancient Celebrities — Daniell's Picture — Guiana Boa — Oriental Pythons — African Python — Tabu- lar Summary — Colossal Sea- weeds — Cane — Cacti— Echinocactus— Candelabra Cacti— Giant Cactus— Dragon-tree of Orotava— Banyan of India — Baobab of Senegal — Mexican Cypress — CONTENTS. Zamang del Guayre — Elm in Wales — Limes in Lithuania — Oak in France — Locust-trees in Bra- zil—Gum-trees in Australia— Mammoth tree of California— A tall Family— Felling the "Big Tree"— Speculation, . 113 VI. THE MINUTE. Wonder at Minuteness— Complexity— Melicerta — Its Building Powers— Mental Faculties— The In- visible World — Diatoms — Their Form and Struc- ture— Mode of Increase — Mode of Aggregation — Various Points of Interest — Life in a Drop of W'ater — Infusorin — Stentor — Animalcule- tree — Floscularia — Rotiforn — Notommata — Salpina— Laying and Hatching of an Egg— Sculptured Shells— Anuraea— Maximus in Minimis, . 144 VII. THE MEMORABLE. Chuck- will s Widow— A Night Scene — Heliconia— Singular Habit of a Butterfly— Swarming of Urania — A Jamaican Forest — Tree-ferns — A Bra- zilian Forest — Glories of Tropical Scenery — Strange Scene in a Churchyard — The Bird of Paradise at Home — Washington's Eagle— A Night with Fern-owls — The King of the Butter- flies captured — First Sight of the Royal Water- lily — Scene in the Life of Mungo Park — Scientific Enthusiasm— Humboldt's Experience, . 166 VIII. THE RECLUSE. Strange Tameness of Animals — Vigilance and Jeal- ousy— Caution and Confidence combined — Shy- ness and Coyness— Eagles— Ducks — Stanzas to a Water-fowl — Ostrich — Rhea — Scottish Urus — European Bison— Mode in which it is hunted— vii CONTENTS. Suspiciousness of Moose — Reputed Power of re- maining submerged — Strange Story — Crusting — Moose-yard — Solitary Habits — Chamois — Diffi- culties of approaching it— The Gemze Fawn- Recluse Life in a Forest-pool— Grebes in early Morning— Snake-bird— Water-shrew— Its Playful Manners, 187 IX. THE WILD. Capture of a Shark — Nautical Eagerness for the Sport — Hook and Line — Harpoon — An expres- sive Countenance — Attendant Sharks at Night — Scene in the Pacific — Sperm-whales at Night — Element of Unearthliness— Whetsaw— White Owl — Bittern — Qua-bird — Prophetic Imagery of Des- olation— Devil-bird — Eagle-owl — Guacharo— Rise of Water-fowl from River— Assault of a Cuttle- Shriek of Jackal — American Howling Monkeys — Prairie Wolves— African Wild Dogs, . . 208 X. THE TERRIBLE. Man's Dominion over the Creatures— Sometimes contested— Bestial Conflicts— Wolf— A M other's Sacrifice — Night-attack of Wolves in Mongolia, — Bears — Syrian Bear — Grizzly Bear — Encounter with one — Wild Beasts in Africa — Terrors of Elephant hunting— Mr. Oswell's Adventure — Horrible death of Thackwray— Hottentot's Ad- venture with a Rhinoceros — Similar Adventure of Mr. Oswell — Thunberg's Encounter with a Cape Buffalo— Terrific Peril of Captain Methuen —Nearly fatal Combat with a Kangaroo— An old Carthaginian Voyage of Discovery — Wild Men— Identification of these with Apes— The Gorilla — His Prowess — Comic Scenes with the Elephant— Tragic Encounters with Man— Perils viii CONTENTS. of Whale-fishing— An Involuntary Dive — Horrid Voracity of Sharks— The Crocodile— Fatal Ad- venture with an Alligator— Potency of Poison- ous Serpents — Detail of Symptoms of poisoning —Case of Mr. Buckland— Death of Curling- Coolness of an Indian Officer— Ugliness of Vipers — Shocking Adventure in Guiana — Another in Venezuela— Fatal Encounter with Bees in In- dia, 228 XL THE UNKNOWN. Charm of the Unknown— Expectation of an ex- ploring Naturalist — His daily Experiences — Ex- perience of Mr. Bates — Animals in Brazil — A Natural-history Day on the Amazon— Anticipa- tions of Mr. Wallace— The Far East — What may be expected in Zoology — In South America, — A great Ape— In the Oriental Archipelago— In Pa- pua—In China— In Japan— In the Farther Pen- insula— In Madagascar — In Africa — Hope points to Central Africa — The Unicorn — Native Reports and Descriptions of it — Dr. A. Smith's Opinion- Drawings by Savages— Our Ignorance of the Depth of Ocean— The Aquarium— Fancy Sketch by Schleiden— Clearness of Arctic Seas, . 256 XII. THE GREAT UNKNOWN. Wonders of Foreign Parts — Scepticism— Moot Points in Zoology — Necessity of Caution — Lia- bility to Error— Question of the Existence of a 1 ' Sea-serpent ' ' — Norwegian Testimony — New England Testimony — Mr. Perkins's Report — Mr. Ince's Narrative— Captain M'Quhae's Re- port—Lieut. Drummond's— Object seen by Cap- tain Beechey — Mr. Stirling's Suggestion and Personal Testimony— Suggestion of the Plesio- ix CONTENTS. savrus— Professor Owen's Strictures and Opinion —Suggests a great Seal— Captain M'Quhae's Reply— Mr. Davidson's confirmatory Testimony —Animal seen from the Barham— Captain Her- riman examines a supposed Sea-serpent — Finds it a Sea- weed — Captain Harrington's Testimony — Captain Smith's Sea-weed Experience— More Testimony from the Dwdalus— Examination of the accumulated Evidence — Recapitulation — Dismission of Sea-weed Hypothesis — Tests- Mammalia — Professor Owen's Hypothesis — Reasons against it — Vagueness of the Drawings — No Seal tenable — Cetacea — Fishes — Shark Hy- pothesis—Ribbon-Fishes—Eels — Reptiles— Small Sea-snakes — Occurrence of a true Serpent in the Atlantic— Serpent Hypothesis rejected— Con- sideration of Enaliosaurian Hypothesis — Resem- blances— Difficulty of Mane— Objections examined —Improbability of Perpetuation of the Form- Examples adduced— Evidence of present EmiUo- sauria— Absence of recent Remains— This Objec- tion shewn to be groundless— Examples of re- cent Whales— The Whale of Havre— So werby's Diodon — High-finned Cachalot — Rhinoceros Whale— Delphinorhynchus of the Atlantic— Con- clusion, 280 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. CHAPTER I. Times and Seasons. "To everything there is a season;" and, in its season, everything is comely. Winter is not with- out its charm, the charm of a grand and desolate majesty. The Arctic voyagers have seen King Winter on his throne, and a full royal despot he is. When the mercury is solid in the bulb, to look abroad on the boundless waste of snow, all silent and motionless, in the very midst of the six- months' night, must be something awful. And yet there is a glory and a beauty visible in per- fection only then. There is the moon, of dazzling brightness, circling around the horizon ; there are ten thousand crystals of crisp and crackling snow reflecting her beams; there are the stars flashing and sparkling with unwonted sharpness; and there is the glorious aurora spanning the purple sky with its arch of coruscating beams, now ad- vancing, now receding, like angelic watchers en- gaged in mystic dance, now shooting forth spears and darts of white light with rustling whisper, and now unfurling a broad flag of crimsoned flame, that diffuses itself over the heavens, and is reflected from the unsullied snow beneath. These phenomena I have seen during many years' resi- dence in the grim and ice-bound Newfoundland, 11 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. and in still sterner Canada. There, too, I have often witnessed the .... " Kindred glooms, Congenial horrors !".... that the poet apostrophises, when , . . . " The snows arise, and, foul and fierce. All winter drives along the darken'd air." A snow-storm, when the air is filled with the thick flakes driven impetuously before a blinding gale, rapidly obliterating every landmark from the benighted and bewildered traveller's search on a wild mountain-side in Canada; or on the banks of Newfoundland when a heavy sea is running, and floes of ice, sharp as needles and hard as rocks, are floating all around — is something terrible to witness, and solemn to remember. Yet there are gentler features and more lovable attributes of winter, even in those regions where he reigns autocratically. The appearance of the forest, after a night's heavy snow in calm weather, is very beautiful. On the horizontal boughs of the spruces and hemlock-pines, it rests in heavy, fleecy masses, which take the form of hanging drapery, while the contrast between the brilliant whiteness of the clothing and the blackness of the sombre foliage is fine and striking. Nor are the forms which the drifted snow assumes less attractive. Here, it lies in gentle undulations, swelling and sinking; there, in little ripples, like the sand of a sea-beach ; here, it stands up like a perpendicular wall; there, like a conical hill; here, it is a long, deep trench; there, a flat, overhanging table; but one of the most charming of its many-visaged ap- pearances is that presented by a shed or out-house well hung with cobwebs. After a drift, the snow is seen, in greater or less masses, to have attached 12 TIMES AND SEASONS. itself to the cobwebs, and hangs from the rafters and walls, and from corner to corner, in graceful drapery of the purest white, and of the most fantastic shapes. The elegant arabesques that the frost forms on our window-panes, and the thin blades and ser- rated swords of which hoar-frost is composed, are beautiful ; and still more exquisitely charming are the symmetrical six-rayed stars of falling snow, when caught on a dark surface. But I think noth- ing produced by the magic touch of winter can excel a phenomenon I have often seen in the woods of the transatlantic countries named above, where it is familiarly called silver-thaw. It is caused by rain descending when the stratum of air nearest the earth is below 82 deg., and con- sequently freezing the instant it touches any ob- ject; the ice accumulates with every drop of rain, until a transparent, glassy coating is formed. On the shrubs and trees, the effect is magical, and reminds one of fairy scenes described in oriental fables. Every little twig, every branch, every leaf, every blade of grass is enshrined in crystal ; the whole forest is composed of sparkling, trans- parent glass, even to the minute leaves of tfco pines and firs. The sun shines out. What a glit- ter of light! How the beams, broken, as it were, into ten thousand fragments, sparkle and dance, as they are reflected from the trees I Yet it is as fragile as beautiful. A slight shock from a rude hand is sufficient to destroy it. The air is filled with a descending shower of the glittering frag- ments, and the spell is broken at once ; the crystal pageant has vanished, and nothing remains but a brown, leafless tree. But all this is the beauty of death; and the naturalist, though he may, and does, admire its 13 THE EOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. peculiar loveliness, yet longs for the opening of spring. To his impatience it has seemed as if it would never come ; but, at last, on some morning toward the end of April, the sun rises without a cloud, the south-west wind blows softly, and he walks forth, "wrapt in Elysium." Life is now abroad : larks, by scores, are pouring forth sweet carols, as they hang and soar in the dazzling brightness of the sky ; the blackbird is warbling, flute-like, in the coppice; swallows, newly come across the sea, are sweeping and twittering joy- ously; the little olive-clad warblers and white- throats are creeping about like mice among the twigs of the hedges; and, ha!— sweetest of all sounds of spring 1— there are those two simple notes, that thrill through the very heart,— the voice of the cuckoo ! Here, too, are the butterflies. The homely "whites'' of the garden are flitting about the cabbages, and the tawny "browns" are dancing along the hedge-rows that divide the meadows; the delicate "brimstone" comes bounding over the fence, and alights on a bed of primroses, itself scarcely distinguishable from one of them. On the commons and open downs the lovely little "blues" are frisking in animated play ; and here and there a still more minute "copper"— tiniest of the butter- fly race— rubs together its little wings, or spreads them to the sun, glowing with scarlet lustre like a coal of fire. The beetles are active, too, in their way. The tiger-beetle, with its sparkling green wing-cases, flies before our footsteps with watchful agility, and numerous atoms are circling round the blos- soming elms, which, on catching one or two, we find to belong to the same class; the dark-blue Timarch a— the bloody-nose— is depositing its drop 14 TIMES AND SEASONS. of clear red liquid on the blades of grass; and if we look into the ponds, we see multitudes of little black, brown, and yellow forms come up to the surface, hang there for a moment, and then hurry down again into the depths. And then come up the newts from their castle in the mud, willing to see and to be seen; for they have donned their vernal attire, and appear veritable holiday beaux, arrayed in the pomp of ruffled shirt and scarlet waistcoat. The frogs, moreover, are busy depos- iting their strings of bead-like spawn, and an- nouncing the fact to the world in loud, if not cheerful strains. The streams, freed from the turbidity of the win- ter rains, roll in transparent clearness, now glid- ing along smooth and deep in their weedy course through "th' indented meads," where the roach and the dace play in sight, and the pike lies but half-hidden under the projecting bank ; and now brawling and sparkling in fragmentary crystal, over a rocky bed, where the trout displays his speckled side as he leaps from pool to pool. The willows on the river margin are gay with their pendant catkins, to whose attractions hun- dreds of humming bees resort, in preference to the lovely flowers which are already making the banks and slopes to smile. The homeliest of these, even the dandelions and daisies, the butter- cups and celandines, are most welcome after the dreariness and death of winter. ''Earth fills her lap with treasures of her own;" and even "the meanest flower that blows" has, to the opened eye, a beauty that is like a halo of glory around it. Yet there are some which, from the peculiarities of their form, colour, or habits, charm us more than others. The germander speedwell, with its laughing blue eyes, spangling 15 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. every hedge-bank — who can look upon it, and not love it? Who can mark the wild hyacinths, grow- ing in battalions of pale stalks, each crowned with its clusters of drooping bells; and inter- spersed with the tall and luxuriant cowslips, so iike and yet so different, filling the air with their golden beauty and sugary fragrance, without rapture? Who can discover the perfumed violet amidst the rampant moss, or the lily of the valley beneath the rank herbage, without acknowledging how greatly both beauty and worth are enhanced by humility? If in this favoured land we are conscious of emotions of peculiar delight, when we see the face of nature renewing its loveliness after winter, where yet the influence of the dreary season is never so absolute as quite to quench the activities of either vegetable or animal life, and where that face may be said to put on a somewhat gradual smile ere it breaks out into full joyous laughter- much more impressive is the coming in of spring with all its charms in such a country as Canada, where the transition is abrupt, and a few days change the scene from a waste of snow to uni- versal warmth, verdure, and beauty. I have ob- served, with admiration, how suddenly the brown poplar woods put on a flush of tender yellow- green from the rapidly-opening leaves; how quickly the maple trees are covered with crimson blos- soms ; how brilliant flowers are fast springing up through the dead leaves in the forests; how gay butterflies and beetles are playing on every bank where the snow lay a week before ; and how the bushes are ringing with melody from hundreds of birds, which have been for months silent. The first song of spring comes on the heart with peculiar power, after the mute desolation of win- 16 TIMES AND SEASONS. x ' ter, and more especially when, as in the country I speak of, it suddenly bursts forth in a whole orchestra at once. The song-sparrow is the chief performer in this early concert ; a very melodious little creature, though of unpretending plumage. Much of all this charm lies in the circumstan- tials, the associations. It may be that there is something in the psychical, perhaps even in the physical condition of the observer, superinduced by the season itself, that makes him in spring more open to pleasurable emotions from the sights and sounds of nature. But much depends on association and contrast : novelty has much to do with it. Everything tells of happiness; and we cannot help sympathising with it. We contrast the ^ufj with the Mvaroc, and our minds revert to adavaola. Here is, where before there was not, at least for us ; and this is novelty. The hundreds of rich and fragrant violets that we find in April are not less rich in hue or less fragrant in odour than the first; yet the first violet of spring had a charm that all these combined possess not. We can never hear the cuckoo's voice, we can never mark the swallow's flight, without pleasure; but the first cuckoo, the first swallow, sent a thrill through our hearts which is not repeated.* * Darwin, writing of the Australian forest, observes :— ** The leaves are not shed periodically : this character appears common to the entire southern hemisphere, namely, South America, Aus- tralia, and the Cape of Good Hope. The inhabitants of this hemisphere, and of the inter-tropical regions, thus lose perhaps one of the most glorious, though to our eyes common, spectacles in the world,— the first bursting into full foliage of the leafless tree. They may, however, say that we pay dearly for this by having the land covered with mere naked skeletons for so many months. This is too true : but our senses acquire a keen relish for the exquisite green of the spring, which the eyes of those liv- ing within the tropics, sated during the long year with the gor- geous productions of those glowing climates, can never experi- ence."—" Nat. Voy." (ed. 1852), p. 433. 2 17 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. Akin to this is the rose-coloured atmosphere through which every thing in nature is seen by childhood and youth ; to whom the robin's bi >ast appears of the brightest scarlet, and the sloe <.nd blackberry are delicious fruits. Love nature as vre may, — and one who has ever wooed can never cease to love her, — we cannot help being conscious, as ' 'years bring the inevitable yoke,'' of such a sadness as Wordsworth has described, in that Ode which— rejecting, of course, as anything but a poetic dream, the theory on which he founds it- is one of the most nobly beautiful poems in our language :— " There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparell'd in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — Turn whereso'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. M The rainbow comes and goes. And lovely is the rose ; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare ■ Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair ; , The sunshine is a glorious birth ; But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.'" The summer, with all its gorgeous opulence of life, possesses charms of its own ; nor is autumn destitute of an idiosyncrasy which takes strong hold of our sympathies. We cannot, indeed, divest ourselves of a certain feeling of sadness, because we know that the season is in the decrepitude of age, and is verging towards death. In spring, hope is prominent; in autumn, regret: in spring we are anticipating life; in autumn, death. 18 TIMES AND SEASONS. Yet a forest country in autumn presents a glorious spectacle, and nowhere more magnificent than in North America, where the decaying foliage of the hardwood forests puts on in October the most splendid colours. Every part of the woods is then glowing in an endless variety of shades; brilliant crimson, purple, scarlet, lake, orange, yellow, brown, and green : if we look from some cliff or mountain-top over a breadth of forest, the rich hues are seen to spread as far as the eye can reach ; the shadows of the passing clouds, playing over the vast surface, now dimming the tints, now suffering them to flash out in the full light of the sun ; here and there a large group of sombre evergreens, — hemlock or spruce, — giving the shad- ows of the picture, and acting as a foil to the brightness; — the whole forest seems to have be- come a gigantic parterre of the richest flowers.* " Ere, in the northern gale, The summer tresses of the trees are gone, The woods of autumn, all around our vale, Have put their glory on. M The mountains that infold. In their wide sweep, the colour'd landscape round. Seem groups of giant kings, in purple and gold. That guard th' enchanted ground."— Bryant. * In examining the details of this mass of glowing colour, I have found that by far the greatest proportion is produced by the sugar-maple, and other species of the same genus. The leaves of these display all shades of red, from deepest crimson to bright orange ; which generally occurring in large masses, not in individual detached leaves, prevents anything tawdry or little in the effect ; on the contrary, when the full beams of the sun shine on them, the warm and glowing colours possess a great deal of grandeur. The poplar leaves often assume a crimson hue ; the elm, a bright and golden yellow ; birch and beech, a pale, sober, yellow-ochre ; ash and basswood, different shades of brown ; the tamarack, a buff-yellow. The beech, the ash, and the tamarack do not, in general, bear much part in this glitter- ing pageant ; the ash is mostly leafless at the time, and the glory 19 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. It is observable that after all this short-lived splendour has passed away, and the trees have become leafless, in Canada and the Northern States, there always occur a few days of most lovely and balmy weather, which is called the Indian summer. It is characterised by a peculiar haziness in the atmosphere, like a light smoke, by a brilliant sun, only slightly dimmed by this haze, and by a general absence of wind. It follows a short season of wintry weather, so as to be iso- lated in its character. One circumstance I have remarked with interest,— the resuscitation of in- sect life in abundance. Beautiful butterflies swarm around the leafless trees ; and moths in multitudes flit among the weeds and bushes, while minuter forms hop merrily about the heaps of decaying leaves at the edges of the woods. It is a charm- ing relaxation of the icy chains of winter. Latrobe has depicted the aspect of the same season in the Alps, which may be compared with the American: — "On my arrival [at Neufchatel at the beginning of November], the vintage was over, and the vineyards, lately the scene of so much life and gaiety, now lay brown and unsightly upon the flanks of the mountain and border of the lake. has passed away before the other two have scarcely begun to fade. Indeed, the glossy green of the beech is perhaps more ef- fective than if it partook of the general change ; and even the gloomy blackness of the resinous trees, by relieving and throw- ing forward the gayer tints, is not without effect. This beauty is not shewn to equal advantage every year; in some seasons the trees fade with very little splendour, the colours all partaking more or less of dusky, sordid brown ; early frosts seem to be un- favourable for its development : and even at its best it is a mel- ancholy glory, a precursor of approaching dissolution, something like the ribbons and garlands with which the ancient pagan priests were accustomed to adorn the animals they destined for sacrifice. 20 TIMES AND SEASONS. The forest trees in the neighbourhood of the town, and the brushwood on the wide and steep ac- clivity of the Chaumont, were still decked in that splendid but transient livery which one frosty night's keen and motionless breath, or a few hours' tempest, must strew on the earth. "There is something strangely moving in the few last short and tranquil days of autumn, as they often intervene between a period of tempes- tuous weather and the commencement of the frosts. The face of nature is still sunny, and bright and beautiful; the forest still yields its shade, and the sun glistens warm and clear upon the flower and stained leaf. "Then there is the gorgeous autumnal sunset closing the short day ; and in this land of the lake ind mountain it is indeed a scene of enchantment. There is the rich tinge of the broad red sun steal- ing over and blending the thousand hues of the bill and forest, and the flood of glory upon the i ky above and lake beneath, while the snows of Lha Alps are glowing like molten ore. I see it still, and it warms my heart's blood. 'A few more days, and then rises the blast, howling through the pine forest and over the mountain-side, shaking from the tree its fair foli- age, roughening the surface of the lake, and draw- ing over the sky a curtain of thick vapours that narrows the horizon by day, and shuts out the stars by night."* The different divisions of the day — early morn- ing, noon, evening, night — have each their peculiar phase of nature, each admirable. An early riser, I have always been in the habit of enjoying, with keen relish, the opening of day and the awakening of life. In my young days of natural history, * " Alpenstock," p. 162. 21 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. when pursuing with much ardour an acquaint- ance with the insects of Newfoundland, I used fre- quently, in June and July, to rise at daybreak, and seek a wild but lovely spot a mile or two from the town. It was a small tarn or lake among the hills, known as Little Beaver Pond. Here I would arrive before the winds were up, for it is at that season generally calm till after sun- rise. The scene, with all its quiet beauty, rises up to my memory now. There is the black, calm, glassy pond sleeping below me, reflecting from its unruffled surface every tree and bush of the dark towering hills above, as in a perfect mirror. Stretching away to the east are seen other ponds, embosomed in the frowning mountains, connected with this one and with each other in that chain- fashion which is so characteristic of Newfound- land ; while, further on in the same direction, be- tween two conical peaks, the ocean is perceived reposing under the mantle of the long dark clouds of morning. There is little wood, except of the pine and fir tribe, sombre and still ; a few birches grow on the hill-sides, and a wild cherry or two ; but willows hang over the water, and many shrubs combine to constitute a tangled thicket redolent with perfume. Towards the margin of the lake, the ground is covered with spongy swamp-moss, and several species of sednw and kalmia, with the fragrant gale, give out aromatic odours. The low, unvarying, and somewhat mournful bleat of the snipes on the opposite hill, and the short, impatient flapping of wings as one occasionally flies across the water, seem rather to increase than to diminish the general tone of re- pose, which is aided, too, by yonder bittern that stands in the dark shadow of an overhanging bush as motionless as if he were carved in stone, 22 TIMES AND SEASONS. reflected perfectly in the shallow water in which he is standing. But presently the spell is broken; the almost oppressive silence and stillness are interrupted ; the eastern clouds have been waxing more and more ruddy, and the sky has been bathed in golden light ever becoming more lustrous. Now the sea reflects in dazzling splendour the risen sun ; nature awakes ; lines of ruffling ripple run across the lake from the airs which are beginning to breathe down the glen ; the solemn stillness which weighed upon the woods is dissipated ; the lowing of cattle comes faintly from the distant settlements; crows fly cawing overhead ; and scores of tiny throats combine, each in its measure, to make a sweet harmony, each warbling its song of unconscious praise to its beneficent Creator. Then with what delight would I haste to the lake-side, where the margin was fringed with a broad belt of the yel- low water-lily, whose oval leaves floating on the surface almost concealed the water, while here and there the golden globe itself protruded. Having pulled out my insect-net from a rocky crevice in which I was accustomed to hide it, I would then stretch myself on the mossy bank and peer in be- tween the lily leaves, under whose shadow I could with ease discover the busy inhabitants of the pool, and watch their various movements in the crystalline water. The merry little boatflies are frisking about, backs downwards, using their oar-like hind feet as paddles ; the triple- tailed larvae of dayflies creep in and out of holes in the bank, the finny appendages at their sides maintaining a constant waving motion ; now and then a little water-beetle peeps out cautiously from the cresses, and scuttles across to a neighbouring weed; the unwieldy 23 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. caddis- worms are lazily dragging about their curi- ously-built houses over the sogged leaves at the bottom, watching for some unlucky gnat-grub to swim within reach of their jaws ; but, lo ! one of them has just fallen a victim to the formidable calliper-compasses wherewith that beetle-larva seizes his prey, and is yielding his own life-blood to the ferocious slayer. There, too, is the awk- ward sprawling spider-like grub of the dragonfly; he crawls to and fro on the mud, now and then shooting along by means of his curious valvular pump; he approaches an unsuspecting blood- worm, and, — oh! I remember to this day the en- thusiasm with which I saw him suddenly throw out from his face that extraordinary mask that Kirby has so graphically described, and, seizing the worm with the serrated folding-doors, close the whole apparatus up again in a moment. I could not stand that: in goes the net; the clear- ness is destroyed; the vermin fly hither and thither ; and our sprawling ill-favoured gentleman is dragged to daylight, and clapped into the pocket-phial, to be fattened at home, and reared "for the benefit of science." Since then I have wooed fair nature in many lands, and have always found a peculiar charm in the early morning. When dwelling in the gorgeous and sunny Jamaica, it was delightful to rise long before day and ride up to a lonely mountain gorge overhung by the solemn tropical forest, and there, amidst the dewy ferns arching their feathery fronds by thousands from every rock and fallen tree, and beneath the splendid wild-pines and orchids that droop from every fork, await the first activity of some crepuscular bird or insect. There was a particular species of butterfly, re- markable for the extraordinary gem-like splen- 24 TIMES AND SEASONS. dour of its decoration, and peculiarly interesting to the philosophic naturalist as being a connect- ing link between the true butterflies and the moths. This lovely creature, I discovered, was in the habit of appearing just as the sun broke from the sea, and congregating by scores around the summit of one tall forest- tree then in blossom, filling the air with their lustrous and sparkling beauty, at a height most tantalising for the col- lector, and after playing in giddy flight for about an hour, retiring as suddenly as they came. In these excursions I was interested in marking the successive awakening of the early birds. Pass- ing through the wooded pastures and guinea- grass fields of the upland slopes, while the stars were twinkling overhead, while as yet no indica- tion of day appeared over the dark mountain- peak, no ruddy tinge streamed along the east; while Venus was blazing like a lamp, and shed- ding as much light as a young moon, as she climbed up the clear, dark heaven among her fel- low-stars;— the nightjars were unusually vocifer- ous, uttering their singular note, "wittawitta- wit," with pertinacious iteration, as they careered in great numbers, flying low, as their voices clearly indicated, yet utterly indistinguishable to the sight from the darkness of the sky across which they flitted in their triangular traverses. Presently the flat-bill uttered his plaintive wail, occasionally relieved by a note somewhat less mournful. When the advancing light began to break over the black and frowning peaks, and Venus waned, the peadove from the neighbouring woods commenced her fivefold coo, hollow and moaning. Then the petchary, from the top of a tall cocoa-palm, cackled his three or four rapid notes, "op, pp, p, q;" and from a distant 25 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. wooded hill, as yet shrouded in darkness, pro- ceeded the rich, mellow, but broken song of the hopping-dick-thrush, closely resembling that of our own blackbird. Now the whole east was ruddy, and the rugged points and trees on the summit of the mountain-ridge, interrupting the flood of crimson light, produced the singularly beautiful phenomenon of a series of rose-coloured beams, diverging from the eastern quarter, and spreading, like an expanded fan, across the whole arch of heaven, each ray dilating as it advanced. The harsh screams of the clucking- hen came up from a gloomy gorge, and from the summit of the mountain were faintly heard the lengthened flute- like notes, in measured cadence, of the solitaire. Then mocking-birds all around broke into song, pouring forth their rich gushes and powerful bursts of melody, with a profusion that filled the ear, and overpowered all the other varied voices, which were by this time too numerous to be sepa- rately distinguished, but which all helped to swell the morning concert of woodland music. A traveller in the mountain-regions of Venezu- ela has described in the following words his own experience of a similar scene : — '"That morning's moonlight ride along the sum- mits of the Sierra of Las Cocuyzas, was certainly one of the most enjoyable I ever remember. It was almost like magic, when, as the sun began to approach the horizon, the perfect stillness of the forests beneath was gradually broken by the oc- casional note of some early riser of the winged tribe, till, at length, as the day itself began to break, the whole forest seemed to be suddenly warmed into life, sending forth choir after choir of gorgeous-plumaged songsters, each after his own manner to swell the chorus of greeting (a discor- 26 TIMES AND SEASONS. dant one, I fear it must be owned) to the glori- ous sun ; and when, as the increasing light enabled you to see down into the misty valleys beneath, there were displayed to our enchanted gaze zones of fertility, embracing almost every species of tree and flower that flourishes between the Tierra Caliente and the regions of perpetual snow. It certainly was a view of almost unequalled magni- ficence. Hiding amongst apple and peach-trees that might have belonged to an English orchard, and on whose branches we almost expected to see the blackbird and the chaffinch ; while a few hun- dred yards below, parrots and macaws, monkeys and mocking-birds, were sporting among the palms and tree-ferns, and, in flights of two or three hundred yards, chasing each other from the climate of the torrid to that of the temperate zone, was not the least striking part of the scene."* I cannot avoid quoting from Mr. Atkinson a picture of day-break, as seen across the plains of Siberia from one of the peaks of the Oural ; though its details scarcely bring it within the limits of natural history proper: — "Day was rapidly dawning over these boundless forests of Siberia. Long lines of pale yellow clouds extended over the horizon; these became more luminous every few minutes, until at length they were like waves. of golden light rolling and breaking on some celestial shore. I roused up my fellow-traveller that he might partake with me in my admiration of the scene, and a most splendid one it was. The sun was rising behind some very distant hills, and tipping all the mountain- tops with his glorious rays: even the dark pines assumed a golden hue. We sat silently watching * Sullivan's "Rambles in North and South America," p. 395. 27 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. the beautifully changing scene for an hour, until hill and valley were lighted up."* Cowper has selected '"The Winter Walk at Noon" for one of the books of his charming "Task;" and as nihil quod tetigit non ornavit, so he has sketched a beautiful picture: — M Upon the southern side of the slant hills, And where the woods fence off the northern blast, The season smiles, resigning all its rage, And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, Without a cloud, and white without a speck The dazzling splendour of the scene below. ****** No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. The redbreast warbles still, but is content With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd : Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below.'" But how different from such a scene is a tropical noon — a noon in Guiana, or Brazil, for example! There, too, an almost death-like quietude reigns, but it is a quietude induced by the furnace-like heat of the vertical sun, whose rays pour down with a direct fierceness, from which there is no shadow except actually beneath some thick tree, such as the mango, whose dense and dark foliage affords an absolutely impenetrable umbrella in the brightest glare. Such, too, is the smooth-barked mangabeira, a tree of vast bulk, with a wide- spreading head of dense foliage, beneath which, when the sun strikes mercilessly on every other spot, all is coolness and repose. The birds are all silent, sitting with panting beaks in the thickest foliage; no tramp or voice of beast is heard, for these are sleeping in their coverts. Ever and anon the seed-capsule of some forest- tree bursts with a * Atkinson's 'k Siberia," p. 59. 28 TIMES AND SEASONS. report like that of a musket, and the scattered seeds are heard pattering among the leaves, and then all relapses into silence again. Great butter- flies, with wings of refulgent azure, almost too dazzling to look upon, flap lazily athwart the glade, or alight on the glorious flowers. Little bright-eyed lizards, clad in panoply that glitters in the sun, creep about the parasites of the great trees, or rustle the herbage, and start at the sounds themselves have made. Hark! There is the toll of a distant bell. Two or three minutes pass,— another toll! a like interval, then another toll I Surely it is the passing bell of some convent, announcing the departure of a soul. No such thing; it is the note of a bird. It is the cam- panero or bell-bird of the Amazon, a gentle little creature, much like a snow-white pigeon, with a sort of soft fleshy horn on its forehead, three inches high. This appendage is black, clothed with a few scattered white feathers, and being hollow and communicating with the palate, it can be inflated at will. The solemn clear bell-note, uttered at regular intervals by the bird, is believed to be connected with this structure. Be this as it may, the silvery sound, heard only in the depth of the forest, and scarcely ever except at midday, when other voices are mute, falls upon the ear of the traveller with a thrilling and romantic effect. The jealously recluse habits of the bird have thrown an air of mystery over its economy, which heightens the interest with which it is invested. Before I speak of night, the most romantic of all seasons to the naturalist, I must quote two de- scriptions of sunset in regions rarely visited by English travellers. The first scene was witnessed from that rugged mountain-chain which divides two quarters of the globe. We have just looked 29 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. at the rising sun from the same peaks, gazing across the plains of Asia : we are now called to look over Europe. "I now turned towards the west, and walked to a high crag overlooking the valley ; here I seated myself to watch the great and fiery orb descend below the horizon; and a glorious sight it was I Pavda, with its snowy cap, was lighted up, and sparkled like a ruby; the other mountains were tinged with red, while in the deep valleys all was gloom and mist. For a few minutes the whole atmosphere appeared filled with powdered car- mine, giving a deep crimson tint to everything around. So splendid was this effect, and so firm a hold had it taken of my imagination, that I became insensible to the hundreds of mosquitoes that were feasting on my blood. Excepting their painfully disagreeable hum, no sound, not even the chirping of a bird, was to be heard : it was truly solitude. "Soon after the sun went down, a white vapour began to rise in the valleys to a considerable height, giving to the scene an appearance of in- numerable lakes studded with islands, as all the mountain-tops looked dark and black. I was so riveted to the spot by the scene before me, that ] remained watching the changes until nearly eleven o'clock, when that peculiar twilight seen in these regions stole gently over mountain and forest. The effect I cannot well describe — it appeared to partake largely of the spiritual.''* The other sketch is by the same accomplished traveller, drawn in a mountain region still more majestically grand than the Oural, — the great Altaian chain of Central Asia. "In the afternoon I rode to the westward ten or * Atkinson's " Siberia," p. 57. 30 TIMES AND SEASONS. twelve versts, which afforded me a fine view of the beautiful scenery on and beyond the Bouchtaima river. The effect of this scene was magnificent ; as the sun was sinking immediately behind one of the high conical mountains, I beheld the great fiery orb descend nearly over the centre of this mighty cone, presenting a singular appearance. Presently its long deep shadow crept over the lower hills, and soon extended far into the plain, till at length the place on which I stood received its cold gray tone. The mountains to the right and left were still shining in his golden light ; the snowy peaks of the Cholsoum appearing like frosted silver cut out against the clear blue sky. Gradually the shades of evening crept up the mountain-sides; one bright spot after another vanished, until at length all was in shadowy gray, except the snowy peaks. As the sun sank lower, a pale rose tint spread over their snowy mantles, deepening to a light crimson, and then a darker tone when the highest shone out, as sparkling as a ruby; and at last, for only a few minutes, it appeared like a crimson star.''* We come back from scenes so gorgeous, to quiet, homely England. How pleasant to the school- boy, just infected with the entomological mania, is an evening hour in June devoted to "niothingl" An hour before sunset he had been seen mysteri- ously to leave home, carrying a cup filled with a mixture of beer and treacle. With this he had bent his steps to the edge of a wood, and with a painter's brush had bedaubed the trunks of several large trees, much to the bewilderment of the woodman and his dog. Now the sun is going down like a glowing coal behind the hill, and the youthful savant again seeks the scene of his ♦Atkinson's M Siberia," p. 321. 31 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. labours, armed with insect-net, pill-boxes, and a bull's-eye lantern. He pauses in the high-hedged lane, for the bats are evidently playing a success- ful game here, and the tiny gray moths are flut- tering in and out of the hedge by scores. Watch- fully now he holds the net ; there is one whose hue betokens a prize. Dash !— yes ! it is in the muslin bag; and, on holding it up against the western sky, he sees he has got one of the most beautiful of the small moths,— the "butterfly emerald.'' Yonder is a white form dancing backward and forward with regular oscillation in the space of a yard, close over the herbage. That must be the "ghost-moth," surely I — the very same; and this is secured. Presently there comes rushing down the lane, with headlong speed, one far larger than the common set, and visible from afar by its white- ness. Prepare I Now strike 1 This prize, too, is won — the "swallow-tail moth/' a cream-coloured species, the noblest and most elegant of its tribe Britain can boast. But now the west is fading to a ruddy brown, and the stars are twinkling overhead. He for- sakes the lane, and with palpitating heart stands before one of the sugared trees. The light of his lantern is flashed full on the trunk; there are at least a dozen flutterers playing around the temp- tation, and two or three are comfortably settled down and sucking away. Most of them are mean- looking, gray affairs ; but stay I what is this ap- proaching, with its ten patches of rosy white on its olive wings? The lovely "peach-blossom," cer- tainly: and now a pill-box is over it, and it is safely incarcerated. He moves cautiously to an- other tree. That tiny little thing, sitting so fear lessly, is the beautiful "yellow under wing," a sweet little creature, and somewhat of a rarity ; 32 TIMES AND SEASONS. this is secured. And now comes a dazzling thing. the ' 'burnished brass," its wings gleaming with metallic refulgence in the lamp-light; but (O in- fortunate puer!) a nimble bat is beforehand with you, and snaps up the glittering prize before your eyes, dropping the brilliant wings on the ground for your especial tantalisation. Well, never mind I the bat is an entomologist, too, and he is out mothing as well as you ; therefore allow him his chance. Here is the "copper underwing," that seems so unsuspicious that nothing appears easier than to box it ; but, lo ! just when the trap is over it, it glides slily to one side, and leaves you in the lurch. But what is this moth of commanding size and splendid beauty, its hind wings of the most glowing crimson, like a fiery coal, bordered with black? Hal the lovely "bride T If you can net her, you have a beauty. A steady hand! a sure eye I Yes 1— fairly bagged! And now you may contentedly go home through the dewy lanes, inhaling the perfume of the thorn and clem- atis, watching the twinkle of the lowly glow- worms, and listening to the melody of the wakeful nightingales. It is always interesting to compare with our own experience pictures of parallel scenes and sea- sons in other and diverse lands, drawn by those who had an open eye for the poetical and beauti- ful in nature, though not in all cases strictly naturalists. Here is a night scene from the sum- mit of the Niesen, a peak of the Central Alps, nearly 8000 feet above the sea level:— "I would gladly give my reader an idea of the solemn scenery of these elevated regions, during the calm hours of a summer night. As to sounds they are but few; at least, when the air is still. The vicinity of man, productive in general of any- 3 33 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. thing but repose, has caused almost profound silence to reign among these wilds, where once the cautious tread of the bear rustled nightly among the dry needles of the pine forest, and the howl of the wolf re-echoed from the waste. As I stood upon an elevated knoll wide of the chalet, through whose interstices gleamed the fire over which my companions were amusing themselves, my ear was struck from time to time by an abrupt and indistinct sound from the upper parts ofthe moun- tain; probably caused by the crumbling rock, or the fall of rubbish brought down by the cascades. An equally dubious and sudden sound would oc- casionally rise from the deep valley beneath ; but else nothing fell upon the ear, but the monoto- nous murmur of the mountain torrent working its way over stock and rock in the depth of the ravine. The moon barely lighted up the wide pastures sufficiently to distinguish their extent or the objects sprinkled upon them. Here and there a tall barkless pine stood conspicuously forward on the verge of the dark belt of forest, with its bleached trunk and fantastic branches glistening in the moonshine."* I have noticed the peculiar silence of a moun- tain summit by night in the tropics, and this far more absolute and striking than that alluded to by Latrobe. I was spending a night in a lonely house on one of the Liguanea mountains in Ja- maica, and was impressed with the very peculiar stillness ; such a total absence of sounds as I had never experienced before: no running water was near ; there was not a breath of wind ; no bird or reptile moved ; no insect hummed ; it was an op- pressive stillness, as if the silence could be felt. But at lower levels in tropical countries night is * Latrobe's "Alpenstock," p. 135. 34 TIMES AND SEASONS. not characterised by silence. Strange and almost unearthly sounds strike the ear of one benighted in the forests of Jamaica. Some of these are the voices of nocturnal birds, the rapid articulations of the nightjars, the monotonous hoot, or shriek, or wail of the owls, the loud impatient screams of the Animus. But besides these, there are some which are produced by reptiles. The gecko creeps stealthy and cat-like from his hollow tree, and utters his harsh cackle ; and other lizards are be- lieved to add to the concert of squeaks and cries. And then there come from the depth of the forest- glooms sounds like the snoring of an oppressed sleeper, but louder; or like the groaning and working of a ship's timbers in a heavy gale at sea. These are produced by great tree-frogs, of un- couth form, which love to reside in the sheathing leaves of parasitic plants, always half full of cool water. These reptiles are rarely seen; but the abundance and universality of the sounds, in the lower mountain-woods, prove how numerous they must be. Occasionally I have heard other strange sounds, as, in particular, one lovely night in June, when lodging at a little lone cottage on a moun- tain-side, in the midst of the woods. About mid- night, as I sat at the open window, there came up from every part of the moonlit forest below, with incessant pertinacity, a clear shrill note, so like the voice of a bird, and specially so like that of the solemn solitaire, that it might easily be mistaken for it, but for the inappropriate hour, and the locality. Like that charming bird-voice, it was beautifully trilled or shaken; and like it, the individual voices were not in the same key. Listening to the mingled sounds, I could distin- guish two particularly prominent, which seemed to answer each other in quick but regular alter- 35 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. nation; and between their notes, there was the difference of exactly a musical tone. Darwin speaks of the nocturnal sounds at Rio Janeiro: — "After the hotter days, it was delicious to sit quietly in the garden, and watch the even- ing pass into night. Nature, in these climes, chooses her vocalists from more humble performers than in Europe. A small frog of the genus Hvhi [i.e., of the family Hyladse, the tree-frogs already alluded to], sits on a blade of grass about an inch above the surface of the water, and sends forth a pleasing chirp ; when several are together, they sing in harmony on different notes Various cicadae and crickets at the same time keep up a ceaseless shrill cry, but which, softened by the distance, is not unpleasant. Every even- ing, after dark, this great concert commenced ; and often have I sat listening to it, until my at- tention has been drawn away by some curious passing insect."* Edwards, in his very interesting voyage up the Amazon, heard one night a bell-like note, which he eagerly concluded to be the voice of the famed bell-bird. But on asking his Indian attendants what it was that was "gritando," he was told that it was a toad, — "everything that sings by night is a toadf' I doubt much whether the voice first referred to in the following extract ought not to be referred to the same reptilian agency: — "During our ride home [in Tobago], I was startled by hearing what I fully imagined was the whistle of a steam-engine ; but I was informed it was a noise caused by a beetle that is peculiar to Tobago. It is nearly the size of a man's hand, and fixing itself against a tree, it commences a * " Naturalist's Voyage " Ced. 1852), p. SSL 36 TIMES AND SEASONS. kind of drumming noise, which gradually quickens to a whistle, and at length increases in shrillness and intensity, till it almost equals a railroad- whistle. It was so loud that, when standing full twenty yards from the t ree where it was in opera- tion, the sound was so shrill, that you had to raise your voice considerably to address your neighbour. The entomological productions of the tropics struck me as being quite as astonishing in size and nature as the botanical or zoological wonders. There is another beetle, called the razor-grinder, that imitates the sound of a knife- grinding machine so exactly, that it is impossible to divest one's self of the belief that one is in reality listening to some 'needy knife-grinder,' who has wandered out to the tropical wilds on spec."* This latter was pretty certainly not a beetle proper, but a Cicada,\ an insect of another order; remarkable for its musical powers, even from the times of classical antiquity. These are doubtless sexual sounds; the serenades of the wooing cava- liers, who, as Mr. Kirby humorously says, — " Formosam resonare decent Amaryllida sylvas." A friend who has resided in Burmah informs me that there at midnight the stranger is often startled by the loud voice of a species of gecko, which is frequently found in the houses. Its cry is exceedingly singular, and resembles the word "tooktay," pronounced clearly and distinctly as if spoken by a human tongue. It is a source of much alarm to the natives of India who accom- pany Europeans to that country ; as they believe * Sullivan's " Rambles in North and South America," p. 307. + Dr. Hancock has made out the "razor-grinder" of Surinam to be the Cicada clarisona. 37 THE KOMANCE OF NATUKAL HISTOKY. that the bite of the little lizard is invariably fatal. None of these sounds can compare in terrible effect with the deafening howls that penetrate the forests of Guiana after night has fallen, — the ex- traordinary vocal performances of the alouattes or howling-monkeys. They go in troops, and utter their piercing cries, which Humboldt affirms can be heard in a clear atmosphere at the distance of two miles, in a strange concord, which seems the result of discipline, and incomparably aug- ments the effect. The same traveller informs us that occasionally the voices of other animals are added to the concert ; the roarings of the jaguar and puma, and the shrill cries of alarmed birds. "It is not always in a fine moonlight, but more particularly at the time of storms and violent showers, that this tumult among the wild beasts occurs." I linger on these tropical pictures, where nature appears under aspects so different from those of our clime. Here is another on the Amazon: — "No clouds obscured the sky, and the millions of starry lights, that in this clime render the moon's absence of little consequence, were shining upon us in their calm, still beauty. The stream where we were anchored was narrow; tall trees drooped over the water, or mangroves shot out their long finger-like branches into the mud below. Huge bats were skimming past ; night-birds were calling in strange voices from the tree-tops; fire-flies darted their mimic lightnings ; fishes leaped above the surface, flashing in the starlight; the deep, sonorous baying of frogs came up from distant marshes ; and loud plashings inshore suggested all sorts of nocturnal monsters."* * Edwards's "Voyage up the Amazon," p. 27. 38 TIMES AND SEASONS. Yet another, by the same pleasant writer, on the banks of the same mighty river:— "The flowers that bloomed by day have closed their petals, and, nestled in their leafy beds, are dreaming of their loves. A sister host now take their place, making the breezes to intoxicate with perfume, and exacting homage from bright, starry eyes. A murmur, as of gentle voices, floats upon the air. The moon darts down her glittering rays, till the flower-enamelled plain glistens like a shield ; but in vain she strives to penetrate the denseness, except some fallen tree betrays a passage. Be- low, the tall tree-trunk rises dimly through the darkness. Huge moths, those fairest of the insect world, have taken the places of the butterflies, and myriads of fire-flies never weary in their torchlight dance. Far down the road comes on a blaze, steady, streaming like a meteor. It whizzes past, and for an instant the space is illumined, and dewy jewels from the leaves throw back the radiance. It is the lantern-fly, seeking what he himself knows best, by the fiery guide upon his head. The air of the night-birds wing fans your cheek, or you are startled by his mournful note, 'wac-o-row, wac-o-row,' sounding dolefully — by no means so pleasantly as our whip-poor-will. The armadillo creeps carelessly from his hole, and, at slow pace, makes for his feeding ground; the opossum climbs stealthily up the tree, and the little ant-eater is out pitilessly marauding.*** Dr. Livingstone has sketched the following pleasing picture of a midnight in the very heart of Africa ; but romantic as the region is, it lacks the gorgeousness of the South American forest : — "We were close to the reeds, and could listen to the strange sounds which we often heard there. * Edwards's kk Voyage up the Amazon," p. 30. 39 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. By day I had seen water-snakes putting up their heads and swimming about. There were great numbers of others, which had made little spoors all over the plains in search of the fishes, among the tall grass of these flooded prairies; curious birds, too, jerked and wriggled among these reedy masses, and we heard human-like voices and unearthly sounds, with splash, guggle, jupp, as if rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts. At one time, something came near us, making a splashing like that of a canoe or hippopotamus : thinking it to be the Makololo, we got up, lis- tened, and shouted ; then discharged a gun several times, but the noise continued without intermis- sion for an hour."* If the sounds of night possess a romantic inter- est for the naturalist, so do those animal flames with which it is illuminated,— "Stars of the earth, and diamonds of the night," Mr. Kirby, the most accomplished of entomolo- gists, speaks in rapturous terms of our own homely little glow-worm. "If," says he, "living, like me, in a district where it is rarely met with, the first time you saw this insect chanced to be, as it was in my case, one of those delightful even- ings which an English summer seldom yields, when not a breeze disturbs the balmy air, and 'every sense is joy,' and hundreds of these radiant worms, studding their mossy couch with wild effulgence, were presented to your wondering eye in the course of a quarter of a mile, — you could not help associating with the name of glow-worm the most pleasing recollections, "t It is, however, in America that these "diamonds of the night" are observed to advantage. In * Livingstone's "Africa," p. 167. + "Introduction to Entomology." Letter xxv. 40 TIMES AND SEASONS. Canada I have seen the whole air, for a few yards above the surface of a large field, completely filled With fire-flies on the wing, thicker than stars on a winter's night. The light is redder, more candle- like, than that of our glow-worm, and, being in each individual alternately emitted and concealed, and each of the million tiny flames performing its part in mazy aerial dance, the spectacle was singularly beautiful. A sight in every respect similar, though doubt- less dependent on a different species, occurred to me in ascending the river Alabama from the Gulf of Mexico. As the steamer passed booming along under the shadow of night, the broad belt of reeds which margined the river was thronged with myriads of dancing gleams, and the air was filled with what looked like thousands of shooting stars. Beautiful, however, as these spectacles were, I had not known what insects could effect in the way of illumination till I visited Jamaica. There, in the gorgeous night of a tropical forest, I saw them in their glory. In the glades and dells that open here and there from a winding mountain- road cut through the tall woods, I have "delighted to linger and see the magnificent gloom lighted up by multitudes of fire-flies of various species, pecu- liarities in whose luminosity— of colour, intensity, and intermittence — enabled me to distinguish each from others. I delighted to watch and study their habits in these lonely spots, while the strange sounds, snorings, screeches, and ringings of noc- turnal reptiles and insects, already described, were coming up from every part of the deep forest around, imparting to the scene a character which seemed as if it would suit the weird hunter of German fable. 41 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. There are two kinds in particular, of larger size than usual, which are very conspicuous. One of these* is more vagrant than the other, shooting about with a headlong flight, and rarely observed in repose. Its light appears of a rich orange hue when seen abroad ; but it frequently flies in at open windows, and, when examined under candle- light, its luminosity is yellow: when held in the fingers, the light is seen to fill the hinder part of the body with dazzling effulgence, which intermits its intensity. The otherf is more commonly noticed resting on a twig or leaf, where it gradu- ally increases the intensity of its light till it glows like a torch; than as gradually, it allows it to fade to a spark, and become extinct; in about a minute, however, it begins to appear again, and gradually increases to its former blaze ; then fades again: strongly reminding the beholder of a re- volving light at sea. The hue of this is a rich yellow-green ; and sometimes a rover of the former species will arrest its course, and, approaching one of these on a leaf, will play around it, when the intermingling of the orange and green lights has a most charming effect. In the lowland pastures of the same beauteous island, there is another insectj abundant, of much larger dimensions, which displays both red and green light. On the upper surface of the thorax, there are two oval tubercles, hard and trans- parent, like "bull's-eye"' lights let into a ship's deck; these are windows out of which shines a vivid green luminousness, which appears to fill the interior of the chest. Then on the under surface of the body, at the base of the abdomen, there is a transverse orifice in the shelly skin, covered with * Pygolampis xanthophotis. f Photuris versicolor. % Pyrophorus noctilucus. 42 TIMES AND SEASONS. a delicate membrane, which glows with a strong ruddy light, visible, however, only when the wing-cases are expanded. During the dark nights it is most interesting to mark these large beetles flying along over the herbage at the edges of the woods and in the pastures : the red glare, like that of a lamp, alternately flashing upon the beholder and concealed, according as the insect turns its body in flight, but the ruddy reflection on the grass beneath being constantly visible, as the ani- mal leisurely pursues its course. Now and then the green light from the upper ''bull's-eye," which seems to be under the insect's control, is displayed, and then again the mingling of the two comple- mentary colours, red and green, in the evolutions of flight, is indescribably beautiful. I have gazed upon these changing lights, flitting here and there in the openings of the dense for- est, during the stillness of the night, till I could scarcely divest myself of the persuasion that human intelligence and human will were con- cerned in their production. Thoughts of the once happy Indians, that enjoyed a simple life in these charming glades before Columbus discovered their retreats, would then crowd up; and it required but little imagination to fancy myself surrounded by hundreds of the aborigines, holding their revels under the coolness of the night-season, as of old. 43 CHAPTER II. Harmonies. Modern science has shewn that animals and plants are not scattered promiscuously over the world, but placed in spheres according to well- defined laws. A few kinds seem, indeed, cosmo- politan, but the great majority have a limited range, each inhabiting its own region, and each, in very many cases, replaced in other similar regions by species more or less closely allied and yet distinct. And more than this ; that there art- predominant forms of life in every region, so en- tirely governing the physiognomy of the land- scape, that an accomplished naturalist, on being suddenly set down in any part of the earth's sur- face, would instantly tell in what region he was, by an examination of a few plants or animals. The statistics on which this science of the geo- graphical distribution of life is built up do not come within my present scope, which is to present the poetic side of nature; but there is a collateral aspect of the same truths worthy of considera- tion, namely, the harmony which subsists between all the parts of a natural-history picture. If we look with interest on the lion, the jaguar, the zebra, the python, at the Zoological Gardens, or the palms, and bananas, and bamboos in the conservatories at Kew; how vastly more inter- esting would it be to behold each in its own home; surrounded by all the accessories of surface- form, of atmospheric phenomena, of vegetation, of animal life, which properly belong to it, and with- 44 HARMONIES. out which it is merely an isolated object. Let us select a few examples. To see the aerial gazelle, accompany a troop of Bedouin Arabs across the great Syrian desert. Grand and awe-inspiring in its boundless immen- sity, unearthly and ocean-like, the eye shrinks from contemplating the empty, cheerless solitude, and vainly wanders round for some object which may relieve the sense of utter loneliness and deso- lation. Across the plain, far away towards the west, where the fiery glow of the setting sun brings out their forms in dark relief, a long inter- rupted line of columns is seen stretching away below the horizon; while, as the troop approaches, prostrate heaps cf ruins appear, groups of broken shafts and bases of columns, huge platforms of stone, and fallen capitals, while here and there a solitary monumental pillar rears itself above the rest in solemn majesty. At the end of the sandy plain, the eye at length rests upon the lofty colon- nades of the Temple of the Sun, encompassed by a dark elevated mass of ruined buildings; but be- yond, all around, right and left, as far as the eye can reach, extends the vast level naked flat of the great Desert, over which the eye runs in every direction, exploring the boundless horizon, with- out discovering a human being, or a vestige that tells of existing human life. Naked, solitary, un- limited space extends around, where man never enjoys the refreshment of a shadow, or rests his limbs under cover of a dwelling. There is a deep blue aerial haze spread over the surface, but the distant horizon is nevertheless clear and sharply defined: not an eminence rises to break the mo- notonous flat, higher than the slight hillocks of sand sprinkled with a withered herbage, which are undiscerned except in their immediate proximity, 45 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. while along the edge extends a large district covered with salt, distinguished from the rest by its peculiar colour. Suddenly a herd of gazelles is seen playfully bounding over the sandy mounds, and displaying their elegant forms, and striking though simple colours, and the inimitable grace and beauty of all their actions. The Bedouins seize their lances, the travellers draw their pistols, and, distributing themselves into a wide circle, endeavour to encom- pass the herd. They seem heedless and uncon- scious for a time, and then, as the intruders approach, they hold up their beautiful heads, toss their curved and taper horns, and trot up into a closer group. Then, seeing their enemies spurring their steeds from behind the sandy hillocks all round them, they suddenly shoot away with the rapidity of the wind, easily dash through the loosely-formed circle, and, though lances are cast, and pistol-shots resound, unharmed they quickly distance the fleetest of their pursuers; turn and gaze, as if in mingled curiosity and contempt, and then away again, bounding over the tawny sand with an agility that seems rather that of flight than of running. Or would you see the hyena, where he feels most at home, surrounded by scenes and circumstances most congenial to his habits? Then plod your weary way still further across the sands, and pause not till you encamp amid the gorgeous re- mains of that ancient City of the Wilderness, M Whose temples, palaces,— a wondrous dream, That passes not away,— for many a league Illumine yet the desert." There sit down alone amid the ruined fanes lighted up by the setting sun, and watch the approach of night, just at the breaking up of the long dry 46 HARMONIES. season. Everywhere around are the remains of the glorious city; walls, and gateways, and columns of polished granite of rosy hue, or of* marble that gleams like snow in the bright moon- light; many standing in their desolateness, but many more prostrate and half-buried in the drifted sand. Some of the pillars are but dimly seen in the gloomy shadow of the lofty walls, others stand out boldly and brightly in the soft moon- beams, while here and there a brilliant gleam slants down through the windows of a ruined edifice, and illumines the deep and delicate sculp- ture of a fallen capital, or spreads over a heap of disjointed stones. Under yon dark and gloomy portal the eye wanders over distant funereal towers crowning the eminences, the noble gate- way of the grand avenue, and lines of columns gradually lost in the distance. But while you gaze, there is a change. The breeze, which had lifted the sand in playful eddies, drops to perfect calmness. Black clouds are col- lecting over the mountain range that forms the distant horizon. The moon is obscured, and the whole heaven becomes black with tempest. A hurricane suddenly sweeps through the ruined palaces, and fills the whole air with a dense fog of blinding sand. Then a flash of forked lightning shoots between the columns, illuminating themfor an instant, and is instantaneously followed by a bursting crash of thunder, which makes the tot- tering fanes tremble, and huge drops of warm rain, like blood-drops, are spattering the stones. The rain now comes down in one universal deluge, flooding the floors, and pouring off from the old marble platforms in cataracts. Flash follows flash in one continuous blaze of blinding light, bringing out the grim marble towers and pillars 47 THE EOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. against the black clouds of midnight with an awfully sublime distinctness; and crash after crash, and peal after peal of thunder are blending into one uninterrupted roll. But amidst the deep roar rises from the gaunt heaps of stone an unearthly sound, like the laugh of a demon. Again, the cackling mirth echoes along the ruined halls, as if exulting in the wild war of the elements, and in the desolation around. Lo ! from out of yon low arch, in the Place of Tombs, gleam two fiery eyes, and forth stalks into the lightning the fell hyena. With bristling mane and grinning teeth, the obscene monster glares at you, and warns you to secure a timely retreat. Another appears, bearing in its jaws a loathsome human skull, which it has found in the caravan track. You shudder as you hear the bones crack and grind between the powerful teeth, and gladly shrink away from the repulsive vi- cinity. The home of the great Siberian stag is among the most magnificent scenery in the world. Search for him amidst the bold precipices of the Altaian chain, where enormous mountains of primeval formation are split and cleft into the wildest ravines, and where cascades fall in snowy foam down the terrible gorges bounded by sheer cliffs that almost meet far overhead, and shut out the light of heaven. Here is a little dell, embosomed in the mountains, as full of flowers as an English garden, — irises and columbines, primroses and peonies, of many rich hues and of kinds unfamiliar to us, and of a luxuriant growth which reaches up to a man's shoulders ;— then a tiny basin of clear water, intensely black from its unruffled stillness and its fathomless depth. Now the trav- eller crosses a sharp ridge, crowned with colossal 48 HARMONIES. needles of naked granite, where the furious gale, shrieking and howling through the crevices, threatens to hurl horse and man a thousand fathoms down; — then he passes into a forest where not a breath waves the tops of the ancient cedars. It is a region where animal life is not very abundant, but where the framework of the solid earth itself stands revealed in unrivalled gorgeous- ness. The cliffs are here of crimson or purple porphyry, as brilliant as the dyed products of the loom, there of dark-red granite seamed with thick veins of pure rose-coloured quartz, transparent as glass. Here a vast, uncouth column of black basalt rears its fused cylinders from the midst of a narrow ravine; and here a vast precipice ap- pears of white marble, as pure as that of Paros. Kocks of all hues, bright red, purple, yellow, green ; of all combinations of colours, white with purple spots, white with blue veins, brown with pale green streaks, pale crimson with veins of black and yellow, are scattered about in unheeded confusion; while, above all, the rich and splendid jasper rises in enormous masses, as if it were the vilest rock, yet glittering in gorgeous beauty, — mountains of gems. Here is one of a dark sea- green, with cream-coloured veins ; there a mass of deep violet; and here a ribbon-stripe, marked ir- regularly with alternate bands of red, brown, and green ; and yonder is a huge heap of shattered blocks of the richest plum-purple, transmitting the light in sparkling lustre through their translucent substance, as they lie where they have been tum- bled down from their beds by the force of the tor- rent, and presenting the most agreeable contrasts between their own deep, rich, imperial hue, and that of the yellow-green moss that springs in 4 49 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. cushion-like tufts from their angles and crev- ices. You pursue the little mountain stream, through the thick mass of tangled cedars and fallen rocks, slippery and treacherous to the unwary foot, wad- ing from stone to stone through many a narrow gorge, till there bursts before you a beautiful cas- cade, that comes bounding down in three leaps from a height of sixty feet. The water is white and sparkling as it plunges over the purple preci- pice; the lowest fall spreading out like a fan of thin gauze, hanging over the rocky wall, and screening the black cavern behind. With difficulty you climb through a ravine to the top of the waterfall, and follow the stream for a few hundred yards higher, till you find its origin in a little mountain tarn, deeply embosomed amidst perpendicular walls of rock, with no open- ing or outlet except the narrow cleft by which the tiny stream escapes. How beautiful is the little quiet lake, clear as crystal, but of great depth, and hence of a deep green hue, receiving and ab- sorbing the sun's rays in its profundity, like a floor of polished beryl ! And there on the opposite precipice, gazing down into the distant water, stand in antlered majesty three noble stags. Magnificent creatures! here they are at home, dwelling amidst this grandeur, the very presiding genii loci* We are familiar, by report, with that great bird of mighty wing, the lammergeyer or bearded eagle, whose red eye is a fair index of its cruel ferocity, that preys not only on birds and quadru- peds, but even on children. We commonly associ- ate this proud and savage bird with the crags of * Every feature in this picture is in Atkinson's " Siberia " ; in the grouping only have I taken any liberty. 50 HARMONIES. the Alps, but it is spread over the whole central line of Europe and Asia, wherever lofty and rug- ged mountain-chains arise. Mr. Atkinson speaks of having shot one in a scene which for savage grandeur surpasses anything in the Alps. It was among the Alatou mountains in Chinese Tartary, where the river Cora breaks out grandly into the plain, emerging from a rent in the lofty mountain- chain, where the rocks rise several thousand feet. "As I determined," says this intrepid traveller, "to explore this mighty gorge, and sketch the scenery, our horses were left at the mouth of the chasm, it being impossible to ride up the gorge; and track there was none. We had to climb over huge masses of rock; some we were obliged to creep under, they being much too high to climb over: in other places, bushes and plants were growing in tropical luxuriance. A scramble of five hours brought me to a point I could not pass; here the rocks rose quite perpendicularly from the boiling flood, making ascent to the sum- mit impossible. Nor can this be accomplished either in spring or summer; while in winter the chasin is so deep in snow — there being no ;ioul [hamlet] within several hundred versts— that it would be madness to attempt it at that time; thus these grand and wild scenes are closed to man, and the tiger remains undisturbed in his lair, the bear in his den, and the maral and wild deer range the wooded parts unmolested. A very large bearded eagle was found amongst these crags, which I shot. After making several sketches, I returned to the horses, and ascended towards the great plateau between the mountains, where I arrived in the evening, tired and hungry. The dark clouds which had obscured the mountains cleared off, and gave me a most splendid view of 51 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. the Aetou, which runs up towards the Ilia; the snowy peaks shining like rubies in the setting sun, while all below them was blue and purple, with the shades of evening creeping over the lower range. In the foreground was my yourt [hut], with the Kirghis cooking the sheep in a large cauldron, while the camels and horses were lying and standing around. Tired as I was, I could not resist sketching the scene, which will ever be impressed upon my memory, as well as the splen- did sunset over the Steppe."* The describer, it must be remembered, is an artist in search of the picturesque. His eye was mainly on the scenery ; but surely the kingly eagle, seated in lone majesty on that craggy throne of his, and surveying with haughty eye his superb domain, was a very grand element in the picture. Again; let us look at Darwin and Captain Fitzroy threading their perilous way from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Beagle Chan- nel. It is a straight passage, not more than two miles wide, but a hundred and twenty miles long, bounded on each side by mountains rising in un- broken sweep from the water's edge, and termi- nating in sharp and jagged points three thousand feet high. The mountain-sides for half their heigh t are clothed with a dense forest, almost wholly composed of a single kind of tree, the sombre- leafed southern beech. The upper line of this forest is well defined, and perfectly horizontal; below, the drooping twigs actually dip into the sea. Above the forest line the crags are covered by a glittering mantle of perpetual snow, and cascades are pouring their foaming waters through the woods into the Channel below. In * "Siberia," p. 574. 52 HARMONIES. some places magnificent glaciers extend from the mountain-side to the water's edge. "It is scarcely possible to imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, and especially as contrasted with the dead-white of the upper expanse of snow." Heavy and sudden squalls come down from the ravines, raising the sea, and covering it with foam, like a dark plain studded with patches of drifted snow, which the furious wind is ever lifting in sheets of driving spray. The albatross with its wide-spread wings comes careering up the Channel against the wind, and screams as if it were the spirit of the storm. The surf breaks fearfully against the narrow shores, and mounts to an immense height against the rocks. Yonder is a promontory of blue ice, the sheer end of a glacier ; the wind and sea are telling upon it, and now down plunges a huge mass, which breaking into fragments, bespreads the angry sea with mimic icebergs. In the midst of this war of the elements, ap- pear a pair of sperm-whales. They swim within stone's-cast of the shore, spouting at intervals, and jumping in their unwieldy mirth clean out of the waters, falling back on their huge sides, and splashing the sea high on every hand, with a sound like the reverberation of a distant broad- side.* How appropriate a place for these giants of the deep to appear I and how immensely must their presence have enhanced the wild grandeur of that romantic scene I We turn from this inhospitable strait to a region if possible even more forbidding, more stern, more grandly awful ; one of the passes of the mighty Andes, the Cordilleras of Peru. "We now came," says a traveller, "to the Jaula, * Darwin's " Voyage," chap. x. 58 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. or Cage, from which the pass takes its name, where we took up our quarters for the night, under the lee of a solid mass of granite upwards of thirty feet square, with the clear, beautiful heavens for our canopy. Well may this place be called a cage. To give a just idea of it would be next to impossible, for I do not think a more wild or grander scene in nature could possibly exist; nevertheless I shall attempt a description. The foaming river, branching oft* into different chan- nels formed by huge masses of granite lying in its course, ran between two gigantic mountains of about one thousand five hundred feet high, and not more than two hundred yards distant from each other ; so that to look up at the summits of either, we had to lay our heads completely back on our shoulders. Behind us, these tremendous mountains met in a point, round which we had just passed, but now appeared as one mountain, closing our view in a distance of not more than four or five hundred yards; before was the mighty Cordillera, a mass of snow, appearing to block up further progress. Thus were we completely shut up in a den of mighty mountains; to look up either way — before, behind, right, or left — excited astonishment, awe, and admiration. Huge masses of granite, that had fallen from the awful heights above, lay scattered about, and formed our various shelters for the night. The torrent, which now had become very formidable, rushed down with fury, bounding and leaping over the rugged rocks which lay in its course, keeping up a continued foam and roar close to our wild resting-place. The mules were straying about picking up the scanty shrubs; and our wild, un- couth-looking peons were assembled round a fire under the lee of a large rock, which altogether 54 HARMONIES. rendered it a scene most truly wild and surpris- ing."* Can animal life habitually exist in these awful solitudes? Is it possible that any creature can make its home amidst this waste of stark granite and everlasting ice? Yes; the guanaco, or Peru- vian camel, delights to dwell here, and is as truly characteristic of the region as the Arabian camel is of the sandy desert. It snuffs the thin air in its wild freedom, and specially delights in those loftier ridges which the Peruvians term punas, where the elements appear to have concentrated all their sternness. It was the sudden appearance of a guanaco, on a lofty peak above the party, that gave occasion to the above description. The peons, with their dogs, had pursued it, and hav- ing overtaken it, had dragged down the carcase, and were now roasting its flesh over their camp- fire. The wild reindeer, in his native snows, is seldom visited by civilised man; and it is a thing to be remembered during life to have seen him there. Climb the precipices of that rugged mountain- chain that forms the backbone of Norway ; cross plain after plain, each more dreary than the last, as you reach a higher and a yet higher elevation, till you stand, in the sharp and thin air, catching your breath on the edge of the loftiest, the wild- est, and most barren of those snowy f jelds. The highest hut you have left far below. You will spend the day and the night, (such night as an unsetting sun allows,) too, in traversing its lonely waste, and you will see neither habitation nor human being, nor trace of human works ; no tree, nor shrub, nor heath, nor even earth ; noth- ing but hard, bare, barren, lichen-clad rocks, or * Brand's " Travels in Peru," p. 102. 55 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. enormous fields and patches of snow. Here and there a little reindeer-moss fills the crevices of the shattered rocks, and this is all the verdure of this wilderness of rocks and snow. You must plunge through the sofc snow above your knees for many a weary mile; this is very fatiguing: at other times, through bogs of moss and melted snow; and then, perhaps, through a wide torrent, whose waters reach to your middle. Now you have to cross a ridge of sharp rock, which stands like an island out of the snow, the sharp edges of the granite cutting into the leather of your shoes, now completely soft and sodden with the melted snow. Now you have to descend a steep snow- mountain ; this is very difficult, and not without considerable danger if you are unaccustomed to it. As every one may not know what the descent of a Norwegian snow-mountain is, it may be well to explain it. Imagine a very steep mountain covered with deep, never-melting snow, perhaps five or six hundred feet in height, the side pre- senting a bank of snow as steep as the roof of a house. To try whether the descent is practicable, the guide places a large stone at the top, gives it a gentle push, and watches its progress. If the snow is soft enough to impede its pace, and allow it to form a furrow for itself and glide gradually down, the descent is pronounced feasible; if, on the contrary, the snow is not soft enough for this, but the stone descends in successive bounds, it is pronounced too dangerous to attempt. It is quite wonderful to see the rapidity and ease with which the guide will shoot down these snow-mountains, like an arrow from a bow. Placing both feet together, with nothing in his hands to steady him, but bearing your heavy provision-box and blankets at his back, down he goes, his pace ac- 56 HARMONIES. celerating every second till he reaches the bottom, and enveloped all the way down in a wreath of snow, which he casts off' on both sides of his feet and legs as if it had been turned up by a plough, and marking his track by a deep furrow. You follow much more slowly, holding the barrel of your gun across you, while the butt end is plunged deep into the snow to steady you, and to slacken your pace. If you lean forward too much, you are in danger of going down head over heels ; if you lean back too much, your feet will slip from under you, and the same result will inevitably follow, and you will have a roll of, perhaps, some hundred feet, without a chance of stopping till you reach the bottom ; by no means pleasant even on snow, and especially when the snow-hill ends (as is not unfrequently the case) in a rocky preci- pice, to roll over which must be certain death. Suddenly, rounding a rocky cliff, the guide makes a quick movement with his hand, and whispers the single word "reins I" pointing as he crouches down to three black specks on the white mountain-side full two miles off. Now all is ex- citement. The telescope distinctly makes them out, — an old buck above, as guard and watcher, a doe and her calf a little lower down. What cau- tion now is necessary in stalking the noble game I There is a broad valley to cross full in their view ; you must creep low, and in line, concealing your rifles, lest the flashing of the sun on the barrels betray you, and not speaking except in the gen- tlest whisper. The valley is securely crossed ; there is a brawling torrent to be waded, and you will be among the rocks. Has the buck winded you? He springs to his feet, shakes his spreading antlers, and sniffs the air, then walks leisurely up the hill-side, followed 57 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. by his family, and all disappear over the rocky ridge. Now is the time for speed I Up, up the hill, scramble under, over, through the great loose fragments, but noiselessly, silently, for the game are probably not far off. Now you are at the rock over which you saw them go. The guide peeps cautiously over, and beckons. You, too, peep, and there they are, all unsuspecting, a hun- dred yards off. The old guide now lies down on the snow, and wriggles along from rock to rock to get round, whence he may drive them toward you. The deer are still busy munching the moss, which they scrape from beneath the snow. A few minutes of breathless excitement. The hunter shows himself on yonder peak. The noble buck trots majestically towards you, his head thrown up, and his fine horns spreading far on each side of his back. He stops — sniffs — starts; but too late I the rifle-ball has sped, and his hoofs are kicking up the blood-stained snow in dying convulsions.* In our homely sheep, it must be confessed, the utilitarian element prevails over the poetic; but with the burrell, or wild sheep, of the Himalaya Peaks, the case is far otherwise. Twice the size of an English ram, with horns of such vastness, that into the cavity of those which lie bleaching on the frozen rocks, the fox sometimes creeps for shelter,t dwelling in the most inaccessible regions, the snow-covered ranges of the loftiest mountains in the world, or the mighty spurs that jut out from them, shy and jealous of the approach of man, whom it discerns at an immense distance, — the * See " Notes on Norway," by A, C. Smith, in the M Zoologist " for 1851. + Hooker, " Himal. Jour.," i. p. 243. 58 HARMONIES. burrell is considered as the first of Himalayan game animals, and the killing of it the ne plus ultr.i of Himalayan shooting. How grand are the regions in which it dwells ! An enthusiastic and successful sportsman furnishes us with the following vivid picture of the wild sheep and its home: — "Wo started early to reach the source of the mighty Ganges. The opposite bank being the best ground for burrell, we were in great hopes that we might find sufficient snow left to enable us to cross the river ; but the snow that at times bridges over the stream was gone. The walking was bad, for in all the small tributary streams were stones and rocks incrusted with ice, which made them very difficult to cross. On the oppo- site side we saw immense flocks of burrell, but there was no getting at them. "At last, the great glacier of the Ganges was reached, and never can I forget my first impres- sions when I beheld it before me in all its savage grandeur. The glacier, thickly studded with enor- mous loose rocks and earth, is about a mile in width, and extends upwards many miles, towards an immense mountain, covered with perpetual snow down to its base, and its glittering summit piercing the very skies, rising 21,000 feet above the level of the sea. The chasm in the glacier, through which the sacred stream rushes forth into the light of day, is named the Cow's Mouth, and is held in the deepest reverence by all the Hindoos ; and the regions of eternal frost in its vicinity are the scenes of many of their most sacred mysteries. The Ganges enters the world no puny stream, but bursts forth from its icy womb, a river thirty or forty yards in breadth, of great depth and very rapid. A burrell was killed by a lucky shot across 59 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. the river just at the mouth ; it fell backwards into the torrent, and was no more seen. Extensive as my travels since this day have been through these beautiful mountains, and amidst all the splen- did scenery 1 have looked on, I can recall none so strikingly magnificent as the glacier of the Granges."* Again ; if we wish to see the vastest of terres- trial animals, it is not within the bars of a trav- elling menagerie that we should look for him, nor in the barbaric pomp or domestic bondage of India, but in the noble forest-glens of Africa. Mr. Pringle has drawn a graphic sketch of such a valley, two or three miles in length, surrounded by a wild and bewildering region, broken into in- numerable ravines, incumbered with rocks, preci- pices, and impenetrable woods and jungles, among lofty and sterile mountains. The valley itself is a beautiful scene; it suddenly bursts on the view of the traveller as he emerges from a wooded defile. The slopes and sides are clothed with the succu- lent spek-boom;f the bottom is an expanded grassy savanna or meadow, beautifully studded with mimosas, thorns, and tall evergreens, some- times growing singly, sometimes in clumps and groves of varying magnitude. Foot-tracks deeply impressed in the soft earth are everywhere visible ; paths, wide and well trod- den, like military roads, have been opened up through the dense thorny forest, apparently im- penetrable. Through one of these a numerous herd of elephants suddenly appears on the scene : the great bull-elephant, the patriarch of the herd, marches in the van, bursting through the jungle, as a bullock would through a field of hops, tread- * Markham, "Shooting in the Himal.," p. 57. + Postulacaria afra. 60 HARMONIES. ing down the thorny brushwood, and breaking off with his proboscis the larger branches that obstruct the passage; the females and younger males follow in his wake in single file. Other herds are seen scattered over the valley as the prospect opens ; some browsing on the juicy trees, others reposing, and others regaling on the fresh roots of huge mimosas which have been torn up; while one immense monster is amusing himself, as if it were but play to him, with tearing up these great trees for his expectant family. He digs with his stout tusks beneath the roots, now on this side, now on that, now using one tusk, now the other, prizing, and forcing away, and loosening the earth all around, till at length with a tremen- dous pull of his twisted proboscis, he tears up the reluctant tree, and inverting the trunk amidst a shower of earth and stones, exposes the juicy and tender rootlets to his hungry progeny. Well may the traveller say that a herd of elephants brows- ing in majestic tranquillity amidst the wild mag- nificence of an African landscape is a very noble sight, and one, of which he will never forget the impression.* Who has ever gazed upon the lion under condi- tions so fitted to augment his terrible majesty, as those in which the mighty hunter of South Africa was accustomed to encounter him? Who of us would have volunteered to be his companion, when night after night he watched in the pit that he had dug beside the Massouey fountain in the remote Bamangwato country? There is the lonely pool, situated in the open valley, silent and de- serted by day, but marked with well-beaten tracks converging to its margins from every direction ; tracks in which the footprints of elephants, rhi- * " African Sketches." 61 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. noceroses, giraffes, zebras, and antelopes, are crossed and recrossed by those of the great pad- ding paws of huge lions. The hunter observes the paths, and selecting a spot, digs a hole in the earth just large enough to allow him and his Hottentot attendant to lie down in. He places his bedding in it, and prepares to spend his nights there. About sunset he repairs to his strange bed, and, with the sparkling stars above him, and silence deep as death around him, he keeps his watch. Soon the stillness is broken by many sounds. The terrible roar of a lion is heard in the distance; jackals are heard snorting and snarling over a carcase ; a herd of zebras gallops up toward the fountain, but hesitates to approach ; then a pack of wild dogs is heard chattering around. By and by, a heavy clattering of hoofs comes up the val- ley, and on sweeps a vast herd of wildebeest ; the leader approaches the water, when the hunter's rifle sends a ball through him, and he falls dead on the bank. The herd disperses in terror; and presently a lion utters an appalling roar from a bushy ridge just opposite, which is succeeded by a breathless silence. A quarter of an hour elapses. A peculiar sound causes the hunter to lift his head, when he sees, on the opposite edge of the pool, a huge and majestic male lion, with a black mane which nearly sweeps the ground, standing over the dead wildebeest. He seems suspicious ; and stooping to seize the carcase, drags it up the slope. Again the intrepid watcher points his trusty rifle, and the tawny monarch sinks to the shot. At length with a deep growl he rises, and limps away to a bushy cover, where he roars mournfully, and dies, 62 HARMONIES. Or take him a few nights afterwards, when from the same pit he sees six lions together ap- proach to drink. Six lions at midnight there 1 two men here ! nothing between the parties but a little pool, which a ten minutes' walk would en- circle 1 One of the lions detects the intruder, and, with her eye fixed upon him, creeps round the head of the fountain. What a moment of sus- pense ! But once more the fatal ball speeds ; and the too curious lioness, mortally wounded, bounds away with a howl, followed by her five com- panions in a cloud of dust. Very different from such a scene is the gorgeous gloom of a Brazilian forest, where the wiry-haired sloth hangs from the branches, the toothless ant- eater breaks up with its hoofs the great earthy nests of the termites, and the armadillo burrows in the soil; where the capybara and the tapir rush to the water ; where painted toucans cry to each other, golden-plumaged trogons sit on the topmost boughs, and sparkling humming-birds flit over the flowers; where beetles, like precious stones, crawl up the huge trunks, and butterflies of all brilliant hues fan the still and loaded air. Not like the small and pale or sombre-hued species that we see in the fields and gardens of Britain are these: their numbers are prodigious; their variety bewildering ; many of them are adorned with the most splendid colours, and some of the finest are of immense size. Very characteristic of this region are the species of the genus Morpho; great butterflies larger than a man's open hand, with the lower surface of the wings adorned with a pearly iridescence, and concentric rings, while their upper face is of an uniform azure, so in- tensely lustrous that the eye cannot gaze upon it in the sun without pain. 63 THE ROMANCE OP NATURAL HISTORY. Solemn are those primeval labyrinths of giant trees, tangled with ten thousand creepers, and roofed with lofty arches of light foliage, diversified with masses of glorious blossom of all rich hues; while from the borders of the igaripes, or narrow canals that permeate the lower levels, spring most elegant ferns, lowly sensitive mimosas, great and fantastic herbaceous plants, marbled and spotted arums, closely compacted fan-palms with spread- ing crowns, and multitudes of other strange forms of vegetation in an almost inconceivable profusion. The gigantic scale of life strongly ex- cites astonishment in these forests. In Europe we associate flowers with herbs or shrubs, but here we see trees of colossal height, in all the splendour of bloom, which clothes the whole crown with its colour. The traveller sees with delight, trees covered with magnificent, large lilac, orange, crimson, or white blossoms, contrasting beautifully with the surrounding varied tints of green. After enjoying, with a restless glance, this display of colours, he turns to the deep shades which lie disclosed, solemn and mournful, between the gigantic trees on the wayside. The flame-coloured raceme of a tilhtndsm, resembling an immense pine-apple, glows like fire among the dark foliage. Again at- tention is attracted by the charming orchids, with most fantastic flowers, climbing up the straight trunks of the trees, or picturesquely covering their branches, which seldom shoot out from the trunk at a less height than fifty to eighty feet from the ground. From the fertility of the soil, the trees spring up so densely, that, when young, their branches, not having room to expand freely, strive to overtop one another. The tillandsias nestle at the ramification of the smaller branches, 64 HARMONIES. or upon excrescences, where they often grow to an immense size, and have the appearance of an aloe, the length of a man, hanging down gracefully from a giddy height over the head of the passer- by. Among the various plants which spring from the branches or cling to the stems of the trees, are gray, moss-like plants hanging down, not unlike horses' tails, from the branches which support the orchids and tillandsias ; or one might fancy them the long beards of these venerable giants of the forest, that have stood unbent beneath the weight of a thousand years. Myriads of lianes hang down to the ground, or are suspended in the air, several inches thick, and not unfrequently the size of a man's body, coated with bark like the branches of the trees. But it is impossible for any one to conceive the fantastic forms they assume, all interlaced and entangled: sometimes they de- pend like straight poles to the ground, where striking root, they might, from their thickness, be taken for trees ; at other times they resemble large loops or rings, from ten to twenty feet in diameter, or are so twisted that they look like cables. Sometimes they lace the tree regularly from distance to distance; often they embrace it so closely as to choke it, and cause the leaves to fall off, so that it stretches out its dead gigantic arms like branches of white coral, among the fresh verdure of the forest, — a picture of death, surprising us in the midst of the most blooming life : frequently they give the old trunk a new cov- ering of leaves, so that the same tree appears clothed in several different kinds of foliage.* So, if space permitted, we might depict the brown bear emerging from his winter retreat in * kk Travels of Prince Adalbert in Brazil," p. 15, et seq. 5 65 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. the dark pine forests of Scandinavia ; or the white bear seated on a solitary iceberg in the Polar Sea; or the whale spouting in the same frost- bound waters, and pursued by the harpoon of his relentless persecutors ; or the moose imprisoned in the "yard" which he has himself formed by tread- ing down the successive snows in the lofty woods of America; or the chamois upon the peaks of the Alps, with the eagle sweeping over him as he gazes contemptuously down on the jiiger far be- low; or the patient camel toiling along the un- bounded waste of tawny sand ; or the kangaroo bounding over the Australian scrub; or the seal basking in his rocky cavern, while the surf is dashing high on the cliffs around ; or the wild- duck reposing at the margin of a smooth river, when the red light of evening is reflected in the line left by the tall and almost meeting trees over- head ; or a group of snow-white egrets standing motionless in the shallows of a reedy lake at dawn of day; or the petrel careering over the long waves in the midst of the wide ocean ; or the tiny cyprides and cj^clopes disporting in the um- brageous groves of their world, — a tiny tide-pool hollowed out of a limestone rock by the action of the waves. These and many more combinations might be suggested ; and we shall surely see how incomparably is the interest which attaches to each form enhanced, by associating with it those accompaniments and conditions of being, in which alone it is at home. 66 CHAPTER III. Discrepancies. I use the term at the head of this chapter for lack of a better. There are no real discrepancies in nature, but I may conveniently employ the word to distinguish a class of phenomena not without interest. We occasionally meet with ani- mal or vegetable life existing under conditions, not which are not as truly proper to them as the jungle to the tiger or the river to the crocodile, but which appear to us strange and incongruous ; which create in us suiprwe, as the most prominent emotion of the mind, — surprise at finding life, or any particular phase of it, in circumstances where we should not a priori have at all expected to ~find it. Examples will best explain what I mean. Take, then, the existence of animal life at great depths of ocean. The researches of Sars, Mac- Andrew, and others, in the Norwegian seas, and those of Edward Forbes in the Aegean, have shewn that mollusca exist under two hundred fathoms of water. Dead shells, indeed, are con- tinually dredged from far greater depths; but these may have been voided by the many fishes which feed on mollusca, and would, of course, fall to the bottom, whatever the depth of the sea in which the fish might happen to be swimming. Deutalium entale, Leda pvgnh-ra, nnd Crvptodon flexuosus have been taken alive in the northern seas at two hundred fathoms' depth: in the Aegean Sea, Kellia abyssicola and Newra cuspi- data, two little bivalves, were dredged, the former in one hundred and eighty, the latter in one hun- 67 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. dred and eighty-five fathoms ; and Area imbricata in two hundred and thirty fathoms. Nor is the power of sustaining life at such im- mense depths confined to the molluscan tribes; zoophytes rival them in this respect. Great tree- like corals, Prinmon and Oculina, spring from the bottom-rocks, to which they are affixed, at a depth of a hundred fathoms and upwards: the magnificent Ulocyathus arcticus, a free coral, re- cently discovered by Sars, lives on the mud at two hundred fathoms; Bolocera Tuedise, Teaha digitata, and Peachia Boeckii, soft-bodied sea- anemones, reach to the same depth, while other species of the same race, — ('apnea sanguinea and Actinopsis /fa tv?, live at the amazing depth of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred fathoms. It has been observed that the shells of moll usca which inhabit very deep water are almost entirely devoid of positive colour, and this has been sup- posed to be the inevitable result of the darkness in which they live; for it is assumed that all or nearly all the sun's light must be absorbed by so vast a mass of water. But yet most of these zoophytes are highly-coloured animals, — the Acti- nopsis being of a fine yellow, the Bolocera, Tea I'm, and Capnea of a red more or less intense, and the Ulocyathus of the most refulgent scarlet. The pressure of a column of sea- water, from twelve to eighteen hundred feet in height, must be quite in- conceivable to us ; and we are at a loss to imagine how the corporeal tissues can sustain it, and how the vital functions can be carried on. Yet the presence of these creatures implies the presence of others. The Mollusca are mostly feeders on in- fusoria and diatomacese ; therefore these minute animalcules and plants must habitually live there. The zoophytes are all carnivorous, and 68 DISCBEPANCIE& being all stationary, or nearly so, the prey on which they feed must be abundant there in pro- portion to their requirements. Perhaps this may partly consist of the mollusca; but it is highly probable that Crustacea and nnnelUhi likewise abound.* One species of the former class has, in- deed, been discovered in the profound sea. A small kind of lobster, named Calocaris Macan- drem, about as large as a small prawn, was dredged by Mr. MacAndrew, (after whom it has been named,) in the Scottish seas, at a depth of one hundred and eighty fathoms.t Who would expect to find the expanse of ever- lasting snow in the Arctic regions, and at the summits of the Alps, the seat of abundant life, whether vegetable or animal? Yet such is the fact. Ross observed, in Baffin's Bay, a range of cliffs covered with snow which was tinged with a brilliant crimson colour for an extent of eight miles, the hue penetrating from the surface down to the very rock, a depth of twelve feet. The same phenomenon has been observed in other parts of the Polar regions, on the glaciers of the Alps, and in other similar circumstances. Scien- tific investigation has proved this colour to be caused by the excessive abundance of minute organisms, mostly vegetable, of a very simple character, in the form, according to Dr. Greville, of a gelatinous layer, on which rest a vast number of minute globules, resembling, in brilliance and colour, fine garnets. I Professor Agassiz, how- ever, maintains that these globules are not vege- tables, but the eggs of a minute though highly- organised animal, one of the Rotifera, named * See, for the facts, Woodward's M Mollusca," p. 441 ; and M Fauna Litt. Norveg.," ii. pp. 73, 87. + Bell s " Brit. Crust.," p. 233. $ See " Cryptog. Flora," p 231. 69 TPx^ romance of natural history. Philodina, roseola, which animal he found in abundance, with the globules, in the glacier of the Aar.* Other minute animals were also found in the snow. In Canada I have found, in the depth of winter, living and active insects on the surface of the snow, which are seen nowhere else, and at no other season. Little hopping atoms, of singular structure, adapted to a mode of progression pecu- liarly their own, dance about on the unsullied bosom of the new-fallen snow. They belong to the genus Pod urn, and are distinguished by hav- ing at the extremity of their body two long, stiff bristles, ordinarily bent up under the belly, but which, at the pleasure of the insect, fly out straight with great force, and thus jerk it into the air, on the principle of a child's toy-frog. Other curious species, — two in particular, both belonging to winged families, yet both without wings, the one a sort of wingless gnat,f the other something like a flea, but really one of the Panorpad&,\ — I have found numerous in similar circumstances, and in no other. As a curious incident, not altogether out of place in this connection, though the parallelism of the cases is more apparent than real, we may notice the trees which Mr. Atkinson found grow- ing, under very unusual circumstances, in the valley of the Black Irkout, in Eastern Siberia, a romantic gorge, whose precipitous sides are formed of different marbles — one white, with deep purple spots and small veins, another a rich yel- low kind, equal, if not superior, to the best Sienna, but wholly untouched by man. "We reached," he says, "a part of the ravine filled with snow and * Rep. Br. Assoc., 1840. + Chionea araneoides. %Boreu8 Uyemalis. 70 DISCREPANCIES. ice, where large poplars were growing, with only their tops above the icy mass ; the branches were in full leaf, although the trunks were imbedded in the snow and ice to a depth of twenty-five feet. I dismounted, examined several, and found that there was a space around the stem, nine inches wide, filled with water, the only parts that ap- peared to be thawing. I have often seen flowers penetrating a thin bed of snow, but this was the first time I had found trees growing under such circumstances. ' '* The burning, sandy deserts of Arabia and Africa seem at first sight to be utterly without organic life, and doubtless they are the most barren of all regions. But even there both animals and vegeta- bles do exist. Several sorts of hard, thorny shrubs are scattered over the dreary waste, the chief of which is the Hedysarnm of the Sahara, a plant about eighteen inches high, which is green throughout the year; it grows absolutely out of the arid sand, and is eagerly cropped by the camels of the caravans. There are also beetles, which burrow in the sand; and nimble lizards which shine, as they bask in the burning sun, like burnished brass, and bury themselves on being alarmed. The lizards probably live upon the bee- tles ; but what the beetles live upon is not so clear. The enormous plains of South Africa, called karroos, though not so absolutely barren wastes as the Sahara, are still great wildernesses of sand, exposed to periodical droughts of long du- ration. These regions are occupied by a most singular type of vegetation; fleshy, distorted, shapeless, and often leafless, tribes of euphorbias, stapelias, mesembryanthemums, crassulas, aloes, and similar succulent plants, maintain their hold * Atkinson's "Siberia," p. 595. 71 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. of the sandy soil by the weak support of a single wiry root, and are fed rather by the dews of heaven than by the moisture of the soil. During the rainless months of the dry seasons, these plains are scarcely less arid than the sandy deserts of the north; yet even then there are reservoirs beneath the surface. Livingstone speaks of a cer- tain plant, named leroshna, which is a blessing to the inhabitants of this desert. "We see a small plant with linear leaves, and a stalk not thicker than a crow's quill; on digging down a foot or eighteen inches beneath, we come to a tuber, often as large as the head of a young child ; when the rind is removed, we find it to be a mass of cellular tissue, filled with fluid much like that in a young turnip. Owing to the depth beneath the soil at which it is found, it is generally deliciously cool and refreshing. Another kind, named mokiiii, is seen in other parts of the country, where long- continued heat parches the soil. This plant is a herbaceous creeper, and deposits underground a number of tubers, some as large as a man's head, at spots in a circle a yard or more, horizontally, from the stem. The natives strike the ground on the circumference of the circle with stones, till, by hearing a difference of sound, they know the water-bearing tuber to be beneath. They then dig down a foot or so, and find it."* There are deserts on the Pacific coast of South America as horribly barren as any in Africa or Asia, if not so extensive. One of these is described by Mr. Darwin, who was all day riding across it, as a "complete and utter desert." "The road," he says, "was strewed with the bones and dried skins of the many beasts of bur- den which had perished on it from fatigue. Ex- * Livingstone's " Travels," p. 47. 72 DISCREPANCIES. cepting the Vultur aura, which preys on the carcases, I saw neither bird, quadruped, reptile, nor insect. On the coast-mountains, at the height of about 2000 feet, where during this season the clouds generally hang, a very few Cacti were growing in the clefts of rock, and the loose sand was strewed over with a lichen, which lies on the surface quite unattached. This plant belongs to the genus Chuhmia, and somewhat resembles the reindeer lichen. In some parts it was in sufficient quantity to tinge the sand, as seen from a dis- tance, of a pale yellowish colour. Further inland, during the whole ride of fourteen leagues, I saw only one other vegetable production; and that was a most minute yellow lichen, growing on the bones of the dead mules.''* The rugged desolation which characterises the interior of the crater of a volcano, even though the fiery torrent which formed it be at the time dormant, seems ill-suited for the smiling beauty of flowers; yet such occasionally exist there. Sir Thomas Acland, who ascended to the sum- mit of Schneeh/itten, the lofty volcano of Norway, describes the crater to be broken down on the northern side, surrounded on the others by per- pendicular masses of black rock, rising out of, and high above, beds of snow that enveloped their bases. The interior sides of the crater descended in one vast sheet of snow to the bottom, where an icy lake closed the view, at the depth of 1500 feet from the highest ridge. "Almost at the top," he says, "and close to the snow, which had prob- ably but a few days before covered them, were some very delicate and beautiful flowers, in their highest bloom, of the Ranunculus glacialis, grow- ing most profusely; nor were they the only in- * "Nat. Voyage," chap. xvi. 73 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. habitants : mosses, lichens, and a variety of small herbaceous plants were in the same neighbour- hood ; and, lower down, dwarf-birch, and a species of osier, formed a pretty kind of thicket. The traces of reindeer appeared on the very topmost snow."* The very dust of the air is found to be peopled with living plants and animals, and that where we should least have expected to find it so stocked; nay, where we should scarcely have looked for clouds of dust at all,— far out on the lone ocean, hundreds of miles from land. In Mr. Darwin's voyage, he noticed, as he approached the Cape Verd Islands, this curious phenomenon:— "Generally the atmosphere is hazy; and this is caused by the falling of impalpably fine dust, which was found to have slightly injured the astronomical instruments. The morning before we anchored at Porto Praya, I collected a little packet of this brown-coloured fine dust, which appeared to have been filtered from the wind by the gauze of the vane at the masthead. Mr. Lyell has also given me four packets of dust which fell on a vessel a few hundred miles northward of these islands. Professor Ehrenberg finds that this dust consists, in great part, of infusorial with siliceous shields, and of the siliceous tissue of plants. In five little packets which I sent him, he has ascertained no less than sixty-seven different organic forms ! The infusoria, with the exception of two marine species, are all inhabitants of fresh water. I have found no less than fifteen different accounts of dust having fallen on vessels when far out in the Atlantic. From the direction of the * MS. letter, quoted in Barrow's "Excursions in the North of Europe," p. 359. + Constituting the Diatomaccw of modern science. 74 DISCREPANCIES. wind whenever it has fallen, and from its having always fallen during those months when the har- mattan is known to raise clouds of dust high into the atmosphere, we may feel sure that it all comes from Africa. It is, however, a very singular fact, that, although Professor Ehrenberg knows many species of infusoria peculiar to Africa, he finds none of these in the dust which I sent him ; on the other hand, he finds in it two species which hitherto he knows as living only in South Amer- ica. This dust falls in such quantities as to dirty everything on board, and to hurt people's eyes; vessels even have run on shore owing to the ob- scurity of the atmosphere. It has often fallen on ships when several hundred, and even more than a thousand miles from the coast of Africa, and at points sixteen hundred miles distant in a north and south direction. In some dust which was collected on a vessel three hundred miles from the land, I was much surprised to find particles of stone, about the thousandth of an inch square, mixed with finer matter. After this fact, one need not be surprised at the diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules of cryptogamic plants."* In all these situations, in which we have seen organic existence maintained, we must admit that there is nothing actually hostile to life. The snow, the hot sand, the calcined lava, the dust, seem ungenial spheres for living beings, offer but little encouragement to them, as we should have supposed, but are not actually destructive. What shall we say, however, to animals disporting themselves, by myriads, in brine so strong as to contain two pounds of salt to the gallon? A solution so concentrated is sufficient in general to * "Naturalist's Voyage," chap. i. 75 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. destroy all life.* Yet, in the salt-works at Ly- mington, in Hampshire, the reservoirs of concen- trated brine are always peopled by immense numbers of an elegant little animal, quite peculiar to such situations, which sport about in all the enjoyment of existence. The little creature is a sort of shrimp, and is commonly known as the brine shrimp, t It is nearly half an inch in length, and is furnished with eleven pairs of leaf-shaped limbs. ''There is nothing," says M. Joly, "more elegant than the form of this little crustacean; nothing more graceful than its movements. It swims almost always on its back, and moves rapidly through the element. The feet are in con- stant motion, and their undulations have a soft- ness difficult to describe.*' Besides these animals, the brine is inhabited by incalculable multitudes of a microscopic animalcule of a crimson hue, on which the brine-shrimp feeds, and which impart to its translucent body their own roseate colour. A similar creature, but of another species, \ dis- tinguished by a broad crescent-shaped shield over the head, inhabits lakes, highly charged with nitre and common salt, in North Africa. The animals are so numerous that they are caught with muslin nets, and dried in the sun in the form of a red paste or cake, which is highly esteemed as an article of food, having the flavour of red herring. Mr. Darwin found, near Buenos Ayres, a shallow lake of brine, which in summer is converted into a field of snow-white salt. The border of the lake is a fetid, black mud, in which are imbedded large * Goadby's preservative fluid contains but three-quarters of a pound of salts to a gallon of water. + Artemia salina. % A. Oudneyi. See "Excelsior," i. 229, for figures of both, species. 76 DISCREPANCIES. crystals of gypsum, three inches long, and of sul- phate of soda. "The mud, in many places, was thrown up by numbers of some kind of worm. How surprising is it that any creatures should be able to exist in brine, and that they should be crawling among crystals of sulphate of soda and lime! And what becomes of these worms when, during the long summer, the surface is hardened into a solid layer of salt?'* Exactly similar lakes, similarly peopled, occur in Siberia also.t Perhaps even stranger still is the circumstance that fishes— vertebrate animals far higher in the organic scale than shrimps or worms — can sub- sist, apparently in health, in water sufficiently heated to boil them if dead. Rroussonet found, by experiments, that several species of fresh-water fishes lived many days in water so hot that the human hand could not be held in it for a single minute. Saussure found living eels in the hot springs of Aix, in Savoy, in which the tempera- ture is pretty regularly 113 deg. of Fahrenheit. But still more extraordinary are the facts recorded by Humboldt and Bonpland, who saw living fishes, apparently in health and vigour, thrown up from the crater of a volcano in South America, with water and hot vapour that raised the thermometer to 210 deg. Fahrenheit, a heat less, by only two degrees, than that of boiling water. The same accomplished travellers visited hot springs in Venezuela, the temperature of which was above 194 deg., and which boiled eggs in less than four minutes. The vegetation around seemed to rejoice in the heat, being unusually luxuriant, the mimosas and fig-trees spreading their branches * " Naturalist's Vcyage," chap. iv. + Pallas's " Travels," 1793 to 1794, pp. 129-134. 77 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. far over the hot water, and actually pushing their roots into it. One of the most interesting discoveries of mod- ern science is that of a subterranean fauna, all the members of which are blind. The transition from the illuminated tenants of this upper world to those darkened subjects of Pluto is indeed facili- tated by certain intermediate conditions. Such is the guacharo, or fruit-eating nightjar, found by Humboldt inhabiting, in immense hosts, a deep, sepulchral cavern in South America, shut out far from the remotest ray of light, coming forth under the cover of night, and invested with superstitious terrors by the natives. Such, too, is the aspalax, or mole of eastern Europe, which habitually lives under ground ; and such is the proteus, a strange sort of salamander found in the lakes of immense caverns in Illyria. They are believed to come from some great central, inaccessible reservoir, where no ray of light has ever penetrated, and whence occasional floods may have forced the in- dividuals that have been discovered.* I know not what the condition of the eye may be in the guacharo, but in the mammal and reptile, it exists only in the most rudimentary condition, completely covered by the integu- ments. Very recently, however, investigations in various parts of the world have revealed the curious cir- cumstance of somewhat extensive series of ani- mals inhabiting vast and gloomy caves and deep wells, and perfectly deprived even of the vestiges of eyes. Enormous caves in North America, some of which are ten miles in length, and other vast and ramified grottoes in Central Europe, have yielded the chief of these ; but even in this coun- * See Davy's "Consolations in Travel." 78 DISCREPANCIES. try we possess at least four species of minute shrimps,* three of which are absolutely blind, and the fourth (though it has a yellow speck in the place of an eye) probably so. All these have been obtained from pumps and wells in the southern counties of England, at a depth of thirty or forty feet from the surface of the earth. The crustacean Calocaris, already mentioned as inhabiting the amazing depth of one hundred and eighty fathoms, appears to be blind, for though eyes are present, their surface is perfectly smooth and destitute of facetted corneae, and white, shewing the absence of colouring pigment. Vision can scarcely exist with such a structure, and this is in keeping with the habits of the animal; for not only would the vast superincumbent body of water absorb all the rays of light, and make its sphere of being totally dark, but, in addition to this, it is of fossorial habits, burrowing into the sandy mud at the bottom. t The Mammoth Cave in Kentucky consists of in- numerable subterranean galleries in the limestone formation, some of which are of great extent. The temperature is constant throughout the year — .V.) deg. Fahr. A darkness, unrelieved by the least glimmer of light, prevails. Animals of vari- ous races inhabit these caves, all completely blind ; for though some have rudimentary eyes, they appear useless for purposes of vision. Among these are two kinds of bats, two rats, (one found at a distance of seven miles from the entrance,) moles, fishes, spiders, beetles, Crustacea, and sev- eral kinds of infusoria.:}: * Belonging to the genera Niphargus and Crangonyx. (See Nat. Hist. Review, 1859; Pr. Soc., p. 164.) + Bell's M Brit. Crust.," p. 236. % Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., Dec, 1853. 79 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. In 1845, three caves near Adelsburg and one near Trieste were examined by Professor Schifidte. Koch, Schmidt, and others had already announced the existence in these caves of a blind fauna, be- sides the proteus. An Oniscus, a beetle of the family Staphylinidue, and two belonging to the CarabidaBj were found to be either totally desti- tute of eyes, or to have these organs reduced to rudimentary specks. Schiodte added to these two new species of Silphadw, a species of spring-tail, two remarkable spiders, each constituting a new genus, and a crustacean.* Still later, Schmidt has discovered two more beetles in these caves, in- habiting the deepest recesses, and described as perfectly eyeless, yet retreating quickly from the light of the explorers' torches into clefts of the rock; a curious circumstance, which would seem to indicate a certain sensibility to the stimulus of light.t Indeed, in several of the vertebrate crea- tures of the Kentucky cave, the optic nerve is found to exist, though the eyes are wanting. Of the true relations of these remarkable beings with those which inhabit the sunny world with- out, there are various opinions. Some have thought it possible that they are the descendants of unfortunate individuals that, in unknown ages past, wandered into the caves, and were unable to find their way out again; the total absence of light, and the consequent disuse of the visual organs, inducing an obliteration of the organs themselves, or at least of the function. Others suppose that the animals were at the first as- signed to such situations, and fitted for them at their creation. Others again, among whom may be reckoned the late Mr. Kirby, in his "Bridge- * Scbiodte's " Spec. Faun. Subterr." t Laibacher Zeitung, August, 1852. 80 DISCREPANCIES. water Treatise," contend that they form no por- tion of the fauna now in existence on the surface of the earth, but belong to a creation as distinct as we may suppose that of Venus or Jupiter to be. The data, however, scarcely warrant such a conclusion as this. Mr. Charles Darwin has lately alluded to these singular facts in confirmation of his theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. He takes the first-named view, that in the subterranean animals the organs of sight have become (more or less completely) absorbed, in successive generations, by disuse of the function. "In some of the crabs the foot-stalk remains, though the eye is gone ; the stand for the telescope is there, though the telescope with its glasses has been lost. As it is difficult to imagine that eyes, though useless, could be in any way injurious to animals living in darkness, I attribute their loss wholly to disuse. In one of the blind animals, namely, the cave-rat, the eyes are of immense size; and Professor Silliman thought that it re- gained, after living some days in the light, some slight power of vision. In the same manner as, in Madeira, the wings of some of the insects have been enlarged, and the wings of others have been reduced, by natural selection aided by use and disuse, so in the case of the cave-rat, natural selec- tion seems to have struggled with the loss of light and to have increased the size of the eyes ; where- as, with all the other inhabitants of the caves, disuse by itself seems to have done its work. ". . . . On my view, we must suppose that American animals, having ordinary powers of vision, slowly migrated by successive generations from the outer world into the deeper and deeper 6 81 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. recesses of the Kentucky caves, as did European animals into the caves of Europe. We have some evidence of this gradation of habit ; for, as Schi- odte remarks, 'animals not far remote from ordi- nary forms, prepare the transition from light to darkness. Next follow those that are constructed for twilight; and, last of all, those destined for total darkness.' By the time that an animal has reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural selection will often have effected other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennae or palpi, as a compensation for blindness. ". . . . Far from feeling any surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Ambfyopsis, and as is the case with the blind Proteus with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved, owing to the less severe competition to which the inhabitants of these dark abodes will probably have been ex- posed.'"* Lone and barren rocks rising abruptly out of the solitary ocean often teem with animal life to an amazing extent, where the navigator might reasonably have looked for utter silence and deso- lation. For these are the resort of millions of oceanic birds, affording to these, Whose proper home is on the wide and shoreless sea, the spots of solid matter which they require for the laying of their eggs and the hatching of their young. This * Op. eft., p. 137. I am very far, indeed, from accepting Mr. Darwin's theory to the extent to which he pushes it, completely trampling on Revelation as it does; hut I think there is a measure of truth in it. 82 DISCREPANCIES. brief occupation, lasting only for a few weeks in the year, appears to be the only link which con- nects these pelagic freebooters with the earth. Pelicans, gannets, boobies, cormorants, frigate- birds, tropic-birds, albatrosses, fulmars, skuas, petrels, gulls, terns, puffins, and multitudes of other tribes throng to such bare rocks in the sea- son, in countless hosts, making the desolation horridly alive. Such a scene as ensues when man intrudes on it has been vividly depicted by Le Vaillant. "All of a sudden, there arose from the whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or rather a sky, composed of birds of every species, and of all colours: cormorants, sea-gulls, sea-swallows, peli- cans, and I believe, the whole winged tribe of that part of Africa, were here assembled. All their voices, mingled together, and modified according to their different kinds, formed such a horrid music, that I was every moment obliged to cover my head to give a little relief to my ears. The alarm which we spread was so much the more general among those innumerable legions of birds, as we principally disturbed the females which were then sitting. They had nests, eggs, and young to defend. They were like furious harpies let loose against us, and their cries rendered us almost deaf. They often flew so near us, that they flapped their wings in our faces, and though we fired our pieces repeatedly, we were not able to frighten them : it seemed almost impossible to dis- perse this cloud." How utterly desolate such insular rocks are is well illustrated by what Mr. Darwin says of St. Paul's cluster, situated in the midst of the Atlan- tic, under the equator. At a distance these rocks 83 THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. appear of a brilliant white colour, partly owing to the dung of the innumerable sea-fowl, and partly to a coating of a hard, glossy substance with a pearly lustre, which is intimately united to the surface of the stone. It seems to be a sort of inflorescence of the phosphate of lime, obtained by the solution of the bird-ordure in the elements, which takes on foliated forms imitative of lichens or nullipores. There is not a vestige of vegetable life here, but of animals there are not a few. The booby and the noddy sit on the bare rock in startling tame- ness, apparently having less intellect than the far inferior races around them. "By the side of many of the nests a small flying-fish was placed, which, I suppose, had been brought by the male bird for its partner. It was amusing to watch how quickly a large and active crab, (Grapsus,) which inhabits the crevices of the rock, stole the fish from the side of the nest, as soon as we had dis- turbed the parent birds. Sir W. Symonds, one of the few persons who have landed here, informs me that he saw the crabs dragging even the young birds out of their nests, and devouring them. Not a single plant, not even a lichen, grows on this islet; yet it is inhabited by several insects and spiders. The following list completes, I believe, the terrestrial fauna:— A fly (Olfersia) living on the booby, and a tick which must have come here as a parasite on the birds; a small brown moth, belonging to a genus that feeds on feathers; a beetle, (Quedius,) and a wood-louse from beneath the dung ; and, lastly, numerous spiders, which I suppose prey on these small attendants and scav- engers of the waterfowl. The often-repeated de- scription of the stately palm, and other noble tropical plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking 84 DISCREPANCIES. possession of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry of this story, that feather- and dirt-feeding, and parasitic insects and spiders should be the first inhabitants of newly-formed oceanic land."* The occurrence, far out on the boundless sea, of creatures which we habitually associate with the land, is a phenomenon which interests even those w ho are little observant of natural history. Visits of land-birds to ships have often been noticed by voyagers, and that not of those species only which are known to make long transmarine migrations, but of small and feeble-winged races, such as finches and warblers. It is much more remark- able, however, to see insects under such circum- stances; yet examples of this are not wanting. Mr. Darwin expresses his surprise at finding a considerable number of beetles, alive and appar- ently little injured, swimming in the open sea, seventeen miles off Cape Corrientes, at the mouth of the La Plata. These may have been carried down by a river, especially as several of them were water-beetles ; but this will not account for aerial insects taking a sea voyage. The same naturalist was surrounded by flocks of butterflies of several kinds, (chiefly of the genus CoJias,) ten miles off the same coast. They were in countless myriads, so that the seamen cried that it was "snowing butterflies," extending as far as the eye could range; and, even with a telescope, it was not possible to see a space free from butterflies. The day had been fine and calm, and so had the day before; so that the supposition that the in- sects had been involuntarily blown off the land was inadmissible.! * "Naturalist's Voy.," chap. i. t "Nat. Voy.," chap. vili. 85 THE KOMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY. But in these cases the land was not beyond the range of moderate flight. What shall we say to jaunts of five hundred or a thousand miles per- formed by these filmy- winged and delicate crea- tures? Mr. Davis has recorded* that a large dragon-fly, of the genus JEshna, flew on board the ship in which he was sailing, on the 11th of December, 1837, when out at sea, the nearest land being the coast of Africa, which was distant five hundred miles. The late Mr. Newport, in his Presidential Ad- dress to the Entomological Society of London, for the year 1845, thus alluded to two other in- stances of the same interesting phenomenon: — "Mr. Saunders exhibited, at our December meet- ing, a specimen of jEshna, that was taken at sea by our corresponding member, Mr. Stephenson, in his voyage from this country to New Zealand, last year. This insect is a recognised African spe- cies, and was captured on the Atlantic, more than six hundred miles in a direct line from land. In all probability it had been driven across the ocean by the trade winds, which blow continuously at that season of the year in a direction oblique to the course of the ship that was conveying Mr, Stephenson outwards. The other instance that has Just come to my knowledge is mentioned in a letter from Mr. Dyson to Mr. Cuming. Mr. Dyson states, that while at sea, in October last, when about six hundred miles from the Cape de Verd Islands, and twelve hundred from Gruadaloupe, he observed a large butterfly, apparently of the genus Morpho, (?)f flying round the ship, but he could * Entom. Mag., v.p. 251. + If the butterfly was indeed a Morpho,— and Mr. Dyson, who was an experienced lepidopterist, could scarcely have been de- ceived about so remarkable a butterfly,— it could have come 86 DISCREPANCIES. not succeed in capturing it. These are facts re- lated by entomologists who could not have mis- taken the objects observed, and consequently they are entitled to full credit. They are full of interest in relation to a subject of physiological discussion, the power of flight supposed to be possessed by these, our little favourites, and the speed with which they are conveyed across the ocean, whether by an actual expenditure of muscular energy, or whether carried by the force of the wind alone. My own opinion certainly is, that the amount of muscular power exerted during flight is trifling, compared with what we have usually supposed it to be, and that in these in- stances the insects have been greatly aided in their progress by the wind. The speed at which they must have traversed the ocean seems to confirm this view; as it is well known that the ^Eshna will not live more than a few days, if unable to obtain its living food." The Atlantic being the great highway of na- tions, we have more abundant observations on this than on other oceans, but similar phenomena exist elsewhere. Humboldt mentions having seen, in the Pacific, at a vast distance from the coast, large- winged Lepidopteni (butterflies) fall on the deck of the ship. Equally striking is the presence of winged insects at very lofty elevations. Saussure found butter- flies at the summit of Mont Blanc, and Ramond observed them in the solitudes around that of Mont Perdu. Captain Fremont saw honey-bees neither from the Cape de Verd Isles nor the Antilles, but from the continent of South America, to which the genus Morpho is limited. The nearest part of that continent is not less than one thousand Ave hundred miles from the position of the ob- server. 87 THE EOMANCE OF NATUKAL HISTORY. at the top of the loftiest peak of the Rocky Moun- tains in North America, the height of which is 13,568 feet. Dr. Hooker, in the Himalaya range, found insects plentiful at 17,000 feet; butterflies of the genera Colins, HipparcMa, Melitsea, and Polyommntus, besides beetles, and great flies. Humboldt saw butterflies among perpetual snow at yet loftier elevations in the Andes of Peru, but conjectured that they had been carried thither in- voluntarily by ascending currents of air. And the same great philosopher, when ascending Chim- borazo, in June, 1802, with Bonpland and Mont- ufar, found winged flies {Diptera) buzzing around him at the height of 18,225 feet; while a little below this elevation Bonpland saw yellow butter- flies flying over the ground. I shall close this category with two examples of animal life in unwonted situations, less scientifi- cally curious it may be than those already ad- duced, but more amusing. That fishes should fly in the air is strange enough, but we should scarcely expect that they would verify their ge- neric name* by going to bed out of water. Yet Kotzebue was favoured with such an unexpected bedfellow : — "The nights being warm," observes the voyager, "we always sleep on deck, to recover ourselves from the heat of the day, a circumstance which occasioned me one night a very unexpected visit. I was awakened by the eonstant motion of a very cold animal at my side, which, when it writhed in my hand, I first took to be a lizard. This, I thought, might perhaps have been brought on board at Chili, with the wood. But, on examin- * Exocoetus, the name of the flying-fish, from «£i», out, and /coirau), to sleep. The Greeks fancied that the fish left the water to sleep. 88 DISCREPANCIES. ing, I found that it was a flying-fish that I had in my hands, and I am probably the first that has caught such a one in bed."* The other incident occurred nearer home. In the tremendous gale of the 25th October, l