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heat and electric tension of the atmosphere would then become almost insupportable. Langour and uneasiness would seize on every one; even the denizens of the forest betraying it by their motions. White clouds would appear in the east and gather into cumuli, with an increasing blackness along their lower portions. The whole eastern horizon would become almost suddenly black, and this would spread upwards, the sun at length becoming obscured. Then the rush of a mighty wind is heard through the forest, swaying the tree-tops; a vivid flash of lightning bursts forth, then a crash of thunder, and down streams the deluging rain. Such storms soon cease, leaving bluish-black motionless clouds in the sky until night.

the trees.

Meanwhile all nature is refreshed; but heaps of flower-petals and fallen leaves are seen under Towards evening life revives again, and the ringing uproar is resumed from bush and tree. The following morning the sun again rises in a cloudless sky, and so the cycle is completed; spring, summer, and autumn, as it were, in one tropical day."

With regard to animal life in the Amazonian forests, it appears that there is a great variety of mammals, birds, and reptiles, but they are very shy, and widely scattered. Brazil is poor in terrestrial animals, and the species are of small size. "The huntsman would be dissappointed who expected to find here flocks of animals similar to the buffalo herds of North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of ponderous pachyderms of Southern Africa."

It has already been observed that the mammals of Brazil are, for the most part, arboreal in their habits; this is especially the case with the monkeys, or Cebido, a family of quadrumanous animals peculiar to the New World. The reader may observe the habits of some species of this group in the monkey-house of the Zoological Society's Gardens in Regent's Park. The strong muscular tail, with its naked palm under the tip, which many of the Cebidae possess, renders them peculiarly well adapted to a forest life. Mr. Bates states that thirtyeight species of this family of monkey inhabit the Amazon region, and considers the Coaitás, or spider-monkeys, " as the extreme development of the American type of apes." The flesh of one species of Coaitá is much esteemed as an article of food by the natives in some parts of the country. The Indians, we are told, are very fond of Coaitás as pets.

Some of our readers are doubtless acquainted with the name of Madame Maria Sibylla Merian, a German lady, who was born about the middle of the seventeenth century. She was much devoted to the

study of natural history, and travelled to Surinam for the purpose of making drawings of its animal productions; many of these drawings are now in the British Mu

seum.

curiosities of natural history, affirmed the This estimable lady, amongst other two following ones:- 1. The lantern-fly (Fulgora lanternaria) emits so strong a light from its body as to enable a person in the night-time to read a newspaper by it. 2. The large spider (Mygale) enters the nests of the little humming-birds, and destroys the inmates. It would occupy too much time to tell of the mass of evidence which was adduced in denial of these recorded facts, but suffice it to say, that Madame Merian was set down as an arch-heretic and inventor, and that no credit was attached to her statements. With regard to the first-named heresy, the opinion of modern zoologists is, that there is nothing at all improbable in the circumstance of the Fulgora emitting a strong light, as luminous properties are known to exist in other insects, but that the fact has been rather over-coloured by the imagination of the worthy lady. As to the second question, about the bird-destroying propensities of the Mygale, let us hear the testimony of so thoroughly trustworthy a witness as Mr. Bates:

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"In the course of our walk" (between the Tocantins and Cametá) "I chanced to verify a fact relating to the habits of a large hairy spider of the genus Mygale, in a manner worth record. ing. The species was M. avicularia, or one very closely allied to it; the individual was nearly two inches in length of body, but the legs expanded seven inches, and the entire body and legs were covered with coarse gray and reddish hairs. I was attracted by a movement of the monster on a tree trunk; it was close beneath a deep crevice in the tree, across which was stretched a dense white web. The lower part of the web was broken, and two small birds, finches, were entangled in the pieces; they were about the size of the English siskin, and I them was quite dead, the other lay under the judged the two to be male and female. One of body of the spider not quite dead, and was smeared with the filthy liquor or saliva exuded by the monster. I drove away the spider and took the birds, but the second one soon died. The fact of species of Mygale sallying forth at night, mounting trees and sucking the eggs and young of humming-birds, has been recorded long ago by Madame Merian and Palisot de Beauvois; but, in the absence of any confirmation, it has come to be discredited. From the way the fact has been related it would appear that it had been merely derived from the report of natives, and had not been witnessed by the narrators. Count Langsdorff in his 'Expedition into the Interior of Brazil,' states that he

totally disbelieved the story. I found the cir- I found an accumulation of such leaves, all cumstance to be quite a novelty to the residents circular pieces, about the size of a sixpence, here about. The Mygales are quite common lying on the pathway, unattended by ants, and insects; some species make their cells under at some distance from any colony. Such heaps stones, others form artistical tunnels in the earth, are always found to be removed when the place and some build their dens in the thatch of houses. is revisited next day. In course of time I had The natives call them Aranhas carangueijeiras, plenty of opportunities of seeing them at work. or crab spiders. The hairs with which they are They mount the tree in multitudes, the indiclothed come off when touched, and cause a vuals being all worker-minors. Each one places peculiar and almost maddening irritation. The itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts with its first specimen that I killed and prepared was sharp scissor-like jaws, and by a sharp jerk dehandled incautiously, and I suffered terribly for taches the piece. Sometimes they let the leaf three days afterwards. I think this is not owing drop to the ground, where a little heap accumuto any poisonous quality residing in the hairs, lates until carried off by another relay of workbut to their being short and hard, and thus get-ers; but generally each marches off with the ting into the fine creases of the skin. Some Mygales are of immense size. One day I saw the children belonging to an Indian who collected for me, with one of these monsters secured by a cord round its waist, by which they were leading it about the house as they would a dog."

piece he has operated upon, and as all take the same road to their colony, the path they follow becomes in a short time smooth and bare, looking like the impression of a cart-wheel through the herbage."

The Sauba ant is peculiar to tropical America, and, though it is injurious to the wild native trees of the country, it seems to have a preference to the coffee and orangetrees and other imported plants. The leaves which the Sauba cuts and carries away are used to "thatch the domes which cover the entrances to their subterranean dwellings, thereby protecting from the deluging rains the young broods in the nests beneath." The insects proceed according to a most orderly method, "the heavily-laden workers, each carrying its segment of leaf vertically, the lower edge secured in its mandibles, troop up, and cast their burdens on the hillock; another body of labourers place the leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy granules, which are brought one by one from the soil beneath." The labours of this curious insect are immense, and no obstacles stop their excavations. An allied species of Rio de Janeiro worked a tunnel under the bed of the river Parahyba, at a place where it is as broad as the

The name of "ant" has only to be mentioned, and the strange habits of the various species immediately suggest themselves to the mind of the naturalist, who is always interested in, and amply repaid by, watching these insects with the closest scrutiny. Brazil abounds in ants, one species of which, the Dinoponera grandis, is an inch and a quarter in length; but by far the most interesting to the naturalist, as well as one of the most destructive to the cultivated trees of the country, is the leaf-carrying ant (Ecodoma cephalotes). In some districts, we are told, it is so abundant that agriculture is almost impossible, and everywhere complaints are heard of the terrible pest. This insect derives its specific name of cephalotes from the extraordinary size of the heads belonging to two of the orders, which, with a third kind, constitute the colony. The formicarian establishment consists of: 1. Worker minors; 2. Worker majors; 3. Subterranean workers. The Thames at London Bridge. These ants first-named kind alone does the real active work. The last two contain the individuals with the enormous heads; their functions are not clearly ascertained. In colour they are a pale reddish-brown, and the thorax of the true worker, which is the smallest of the orders, is armed with three pairs of sharp spines; the head is provided with a pair of similar spines proceeding from the cheeks behind. This ant, known by the native name of Sauba, has long been celebrated for its habit of clipping off, and carrying away, large quantities of leaves:

"When employed in this work," Mr. Bates says, "their processions look like a multitude of animated leaves on the march. In some places

are sad rogues, being household plunderers and robbers of the farinha, or mandioca meal, of the poor inhabitants of Brazil; and Mr. Bates was obliged to lay trains of gunpowder along their line of march to blow them up, which in the end resulted in scaring the burglars away. We have already alluded to the massive heads possessed by the major and subterranean kinds of neuters, and stated that the active work is done by the worker-minor, or small-headed kind. With regard to the function of the largeheaded worker-major, Mr. Bates was unable to satisfy himself:

"They are not the soldiers or defenders of the working portion of the community, like the

The air was alive with them; they had put out the lamp, and when I relighted it, the place appeared blackened with the impish multitudes that were whirling round and round. After I had laid about well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared among the tiles, but when all was still again they returned, and once more extinguished the light. I took no further notice of them and went to sleep. The next night several got into my hammock; I seized them as they were crawling over me, and dashed them against the wall. The next morning I found a wound, evidently caused by a bat, on my hip."

armed class in the Termites or white ants, for they never fight. The species has no sting, and does not display active resistance when interfered with. I once imagined they exercised a sort of superintendence over the others; but this function is entirely unnecessary in a community where all work with a precision and regularity resembling the subordinate parts of a piece of machinery. I came to the conclusion, at last, that they have no very precisely defined function. They cannot, however, be entirely useless to the community, for the sustenance of an idle class of such bulky individuals would be too heavy a charge for the species to sustain. I think they serve in some sort as passive instruments of protection to the real workers. Their of South America, concerning whose bloodBats remind us of the vampire, a native enormously large, hard, and indestructible heads may be of use in protecting them against the attacks of insectivorous animals. They would be, on this view, a kind of pièces de resistance, serving as a foil against onslaughts made on the main body of workers."

But the third order, the subterranean kind, we are told, is most curious of all:

sucking properties so much discussion has been from time to time raised. The vampire bat was very common at Ega; it is the largest of all the South American species. Of this bat Mr. Bates writes:

"Nothing in animal physiognomy can be more hideous than the countenance of this creature when viewed from the front; the large leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the head, the erect spear-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose, the grin, and glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure that reminds one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people have inferred diabolical instincts on the part of so ugly an animal. The vampire, however, is the most harmless of all bats, and its inoffensive character is well known to residents on the banks of the Amazons."

"If the top of a small, fresh hillock, one in which the thaching process is going on, be taken off, a broad cylindrical shaft is disclosed, at a depth about two feet from the surface. If this be probed with a stick, which may be done to the extent of three or four feet without touching bottom, a small number of colossal fellows will slowly begin to make their way up the smooth sides of the mine. Their heads are of the same size as those of the other class (worker-major); but the front is clothed with hairs, instead of being polished, and they have in the middle of the forehead a twin ocellus, or sim- That much fable has attached itself to ple eye, of quite different structure from the or- the history of this curious creature we are dinary compound eyes, on the sides of the head. This frontal eye is totally wanting in the other perfectly convinced, and that its bloodworkers, and is not known in any other kind of sucking peculiarities have been grossly exant. The apparition of these strange creatures aggerated we must allow. When this bat from the cavernous depths of the mine remind has been said to perform the operation of ed one when I first observed them, of the Cy-drawing blood, " by inserting its aculeated clopes of Homeric fable. They were not very pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and 1 had no difficulty in securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any other circumstances than those here related, and what their special functions may be I cannot divine."

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tongue into the vein of a sleeping person with so much dexterity as not to be felt, at the same time fanning the air with its large wings, and thus producing a sensation so delightfully cool that the sleep is rendered still more profound," it is clear that the mythical element exists to a great extent in the the vampire is the most harmless of all narratives; but our author's assertion that bats," does not tally with the statements of other naturalists of considerable note. Mr. Wallace says he saw the effects of the vampires' operations on a young horse, and that the first morning after its arrival the poor animal presented a most pitiable appearance, large streams of clotted blood running

* An expression used by Mr. Wood in his "Zoög

raphy." It is enough to remark that no known bat has an aculeated tongue.

down from several wounds on its back and sides:

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"The appearance," Mr. Wallace adds, was however, I dare say, worse than the reality, as the bats have the skill to bleed without giving pain, and it is quite possible the horse, like a patient under the influence of chloroform, may have known nothing of the matter. The danger is in the attacks being repeated every night,

till the loss of blood becomes serious. To prevent this, red peppers are usually rubbed on the parts wounded and on all likely places; and this will partly check the sanguinivorous appetite of the bats, but not entirely, as in spite of this application the poor animal was again bitten the next night in fresh places." *

Both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Waterton, if we remember rightly, have borne similar testimony in favour of the opinion that the vampire does suck blood. A servant of the former gentleman, when near Coquimbo, in Chili, observed something attached to the withers of one of his horses which was restless, and on putting his hand upon the place he secured a vampire bat. Mr. Waterton, however, could not induce the vampires to bite him, notwithstanding the now veteran naturalist † slept many months in an open loft which vampires frequented; but an Indian boy who slept near him had his toes often "tapped," while fowls were destroyed and even an unfortunate donkey was much persecuted, looking, as Mr. Waterton says, "like misery steeped in vinegar.”

While at Villa Nova, on the Lower Amazons, our naturalist was subjected to another annoyance, in the shape of ticks. The tracts thereabouts "swarmed with carapátos, ugly ticks, belonging to the genus Ixodes, which mount to the tops of the blades of grass, and attach themselves to the clothes of passers-by. They are a great annoyance. It occupied me a full hour to pick them off my flesh after my diurnal

ramble."

Mr. Bates's stay at Ega, on the Upper Amazons, and his expeditions in search of scarlet-faced monkeys, owl-faced night apes, marmosets, curl-crested toucans, blind ants, and hundreds of other interesting animals, must have been particularly enjoyable, if we except the presence of an abominable gadfly, which fixes on the flesh of man as breeding-places for its grub, and causes painful tumours. "Ega was a fine field for a Natural History collector," and Mr. Bates

"Travels on the Amazon," p. 44.

Since this article was in type this excellent naturalist and kind-hearted gentleman has passed away from amongst us.

ticketed with the name of this town more than 3000 new species of animals.

It is an old and a true saying that you "can have too much of a good thing." A London alderman would soon grumble had he to dine every day on turtle only. "The great fresh-water turtle of the Amazons grows in the upper river to an immense size, a full-grown one measuring nearly three feet in length by two in breadth, and is a load for the strongest Indian. The flesh is very tender, palatable, and wholesome; but it is very cloying. Every one ends sooner or later by becoming thoroughly surfeited." Our traveller adds that he became so sick of turtle in the course of two years that he could not bear the smell of it, although at the same time nothing else was to be had, and he was suffering actual hunger. The pools about Ega abound in turtles and alligators, and the Indians capture a great number of the former animals by means of sharp steel-pointed arrows, fitted into a peg which enters the tip of the shaft. This peg is fastened to the arrow-shaft by means of a piece of twine; and when the missile-which the people hurl with astonishing skill-pierces the carapace, the peg drops out and the struck turtle dives to the bottom, the detached shaft floating on the surface serving to guide the sportsman to his game. So clever are the natives in the use of the bow and arrow, that they do not wait till the turtle comes to the surface to breathe, but shoot at the back of the animal as it moves under the water, and hardly ever fail to pierce the submerged shell.

One of the most curious and interesting facts in natural history is the assimilation in many animals of form and colour to other objects, animate or inanimate. Thus the caterpillars, termed, from their mode of progression, "geometric," bear so close a resemblance to the twigs of the trees or bushes upon which they rest that it is no easy thing to distinguish them at a glance; the buff-tip moth, when at rest, looks just like a broken bit of lichen-covered branch, the coloured tips of the wings resembling a section of the wood. The beautiful Australian parakeets, known as the Betcherrygar parrots, look so much like the leaves of Eucalypti, or gum-trees, on which they repose, that, though numbers may be perched upon a branch, they are hardly to be seen so long as they keep quiet. Some South American beetles (of the family Cassida) closely resemble glittering drops of dew; some kinds of spiders mimic flowerbuds," and station themselves motionless in the axils of leaves

and other parts of plants to wait for their | tinct groups would in course of time be, victims." Insects belonging to the genera according to the law of inheritance, quite

complete. This is the explanation which Mr. Bates gives of this natural phenomenon. The phenomenon itself is an undoubted one; whether it is or is not satisfactorily accounted for cannot at present be determined; we must wait for further investigation.

We had intended to speak of some of the South American Palms, those wondrous and valuable productions of tropical countries, the India-rubber trees, and other vegetable productions of the Amazons; but we must linger no longer with the excellent naturalist from whose volumes we have derived so much pleasure. Mr. Bates has written a book full of interest, with the spirit of a real lover of nature, and with the pen of a philosopher.

of Mantis, Locusta, and Phasma often show a wonderful resemblance to leaves or sticks. Examples of "mimetic analogy" may also be found amongst birds; but perhaps the most remarkable cases of imitation are to be found amongst the butterflies of the Valley of the Amazon, recently made known to us by Mr. Bates. There is a family of butterflies named Heliconidæ, of a slow flight and feeble structure, very numerous in this South American region, notwithstanding that the districts abound with insectivorous birds. Now, Mr. Bates has observed that where large numbers of this family are found they are always accompanied by species of a totally distinct family which closely resemble them in size, form, colour, and markings. So close is this resemblance that Mr. Bates often found it impossible to Leaving, then, the New World, let us cast distinguish members of one family from a glance, in company with one of the greatthose of the other when the insects were on est botanists of the day, at what we may the wing; and he observed, moreover, that call the tropical features of the Sikkim when a local variety of a species of the Himalayas. Though this region is not strictHeliconidae occurred, there was found also ly speaking within the Tropics, yet the vegea butterfly of another family imitating that tation at the base is of a tropical character. local variety. There is no difficulty at all In this wonderful district the naturalist is in distinguishing the imitators from the im- able to wander through every zone of vegeitated, for the latter have all a family like- tation, from the "dense deep-green dripping ness, while the former depart from the nor- forests" at the base of the Himalaya, formed mal form and likeness of the families to which of giant trees, as the Duabanga and Termithey respectively belong. What is the nalia, with Cedrela and Gordonia Wallichii, meaning of this curious fact? It is this: mingled with innumerable shrubs and herbs, the Heliconidae, or imitated butterflies, are to the lichens and mosses of the regions of not persecuted by birds, dragon-flies, lizards, perpetual snow. The tropical vegetation of or other insectivorous enemies, while the the Sikkim extends from Siligoree, a station members of the imitating families are sub- on the verge of the Terai, "that low malaject to much persecution. The butterflies rious belt which skirts the base of the imitated are said to owe their immunity Himalaya from the Sutlej to Brahma-Koond, from persecution to their offensive odour, in Upper Assam." "Every feature," writes while no such fortunate character belongs Dr. Hooker, "botanical, geological, and to the imitating insects. But how, we nat- zoological, is new on entering this district. urally ask, has this change of colour and The change is sudden and immediate: sea form been effected? Mr. Darwin and Mr. and shore are hardly more conspicuously Bates explain it on the principle of Natu- different; nor from the edge of the Terai ral Selection. Let us suppose that a mem- to the limit of perpetual snow is any botaniber of the persecuted family gave birth to cal region more clearly marked than this a variety and there is a tendency in all which is the commencement of Himalayan animals to produce varieties — exhibiting a vegetation." The banks of the numerous very slight resemblance to some species of tortuous streams are richly clothed with Heliconida. This individual, in conse- vines and climbing convolvoluses, with quence of this slight resemblance, would various kinds of Cucurbitaceae and Bignoni have a better chance of living and produ- aceæ. The district of the Terai is very cing young than those of its relatives which pestilential, and, though fatal to Europeans, bear no resemblance whatever to the un- is inhabited by a race called the Mechis molested family. Some of the offspring of with impunity. As our traveller proceeded this slightly-favored variety would very to the little bungalow of Punkabaree, about probably show more marked resemblances to the unpersecuted butterflies; and thus the likeness between insects of totally dis

1800 feet in elevation, the bushy timber of the Terai was found to be replaced by giant forests, with large bamboos cresting the hills,

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