Travels on the Amazon. Alfred Russel Wallace

climb over the hedges, as well as several most beautiful Bignonias or trumpet-flowers, with yellow, orange, or purple blossoms. But most striking of all are the passion-flowers, which are abundant on the skirts of the forest, and are of various colours,—purple, scarlet, or pale pink: the purple ones have an exquisite perfume, and they all produce an agreeable fruit—the grenadilla of the West Indies. There are besides many other elegant flowers, and numbers of less conspicuous ones. The papilionaceous flowers, or peas, are common; cassias are very numerous, some being mere weeds, others handsome trees, having a profusion of bright yellow blossoms. Then there are the curious sensitive plants (Mimosa), looked upon with such interest in our greenhouses, but which here abound as common wayside weeds. Most of them have purple or white globular heads of flowers. Some are very sensitive, a gentle touch causing many leaves to drop and fold up; others require a ruder hand to make them exhibit their peculiar properties; while others again will scarcely show any signs of feeling, though ever so roughly treated. They are all more or less armed with sharp prickles, which may partly answer the purpose of guarding their delicate frames from some of the numerous shocks they would otherwise receive.

      The immense number of orange-trees about the city is an interesting feature, and renders that delicious fruit always abundant and cheap. Many of the public roads are lined with them, and every garden is well stocked, so that the cost is merely the trouble of gathering and taking to market. The mango is also abundant, and in some of the public avenues is planted alternately with the Mangabeira, or silk cotton-tree, which grows to a great size, though, as its leaves are deciduous, it is not so well adapted to produce the shade so much required as some evergreen trees. On almost every roadside, thicket, or waste, the coffee-tree is seen growing, and generally with flower or fruit, and often both; yet such is the scarcity of labour or indolence of the people, that none is gathered but a little for private consumption, while the city is almost entirely supplied with coffee grown in other parts of Brazil.

      Turning our attention to the world of animal life, what first attract notice are the lizards. They abound everywhere. In the city they are seen running along the walls and palings, sunning themselves on logs of wood, or creeping up to the eaves of the lower houses. In every garden, road, and dry sandy situation they are scampering out of the way as we walk along. Now they crawl round the trunk of a tree, watching us as we pass, and keeping carefully out of sight, just as a squirrel will do under similar circumstances; now they walk up a smooth wall or paling as composedly and securely as if they had the plain earth beneath them. Some are of a dark coppery colour, some with backs of the most brilliant silky green and blue, and others marked with delicate shades and lines of yellow and brown. On this sandy soil, and beneath this bright sunshine, they seem to enjoy every moment of their existence, basking in the hot sun with the most indolent satisfaction, then scampering off as if every ray had lent vivacity and vigour to their chilly constitutions. Far different from the little lizards with us, which cannot raise their body from the ground, and drag their long tails like an encumbrance after them, these denizens of a happier clime carry their tails stuck out in the air, and gallop away on their four legs with as much freedom and muscular power as a warm-blooded quadruped. To catch such lively creatures was of course no easy matter, and all our attempts utterly failed; but we soon got the little Negro and Indian boys to shoot them for us with their bows and arrows, and thus obtained many specimens.

      Next to the lizards, the ants cannot fail to be noticed. They startle you with the apparition of scraps of paper, dead leaves, and feathers, endued with locomotive powers; processions engaged in some abstruse engineering operations stretch across the public paths; the flowers you gather or the fruit you pluck is covered with them, and they spread over your hand in such swarms as to make you hastily drop your prize. At meals they make themselves quite at home upon the tablecloth, in your plate, and in the sugar-basin, though not in such numbers as to offer any serious obstruction to your meal. In these situations, and in many others, you will find them, and in each situation it will be a distinct kind. Many plants have ants peculiar to them. Their nests are seen forming huge black masses, several feet in diameter, on the branches of trees. In paths in woods and gardens we often see a gigantic black species wandering about singly or in pairs, measuring near an inch and a half long; while some of the species that frequent houses are so small as to require a box-lid to fit very closely in order to keep them out. They are great enemies to any dead animal matter, especially insects and small birds. In drying the specimens of insects we procured, we found it necessary to hang up the boxes containing them to the roof of the verandah; but even then a party got possession by descending the string, as we caught them in the act, and found that in a few hours they had destroyed several fine insects. We were then informed that the Andiroba oil of the country, which is very bitter, would keep them away, and by well soaking the suspending string we have since been free from their incursions.

      Having at first employed ourselves principally in collecting insects, I am enabled to say something about the other families of that numerous class. None of the orders of insects were so numerous as I expected, with the exception of the diurnal Lepidoptera, or butterflies; and even these, though the number of different species was very great, did not abound in individuals to the extent I had been led to anticipate. In about three weeks Mr. B. and myself had captured upwards of a hundred and fifty distinct species of butterflies. Among them were eight species of the handsome genus Papilio, and three Morphos, those splendid large metallic-blue butterflies which are always first noticed by travellers in South America, in which country alone they are found, and where, flying lazily along the paths in the forest, alternately in deep shade and bright sunshine, they present one of the most striking sights the insect world can produce. Among the smaller species the exquisite colouring and variety of marking is wonderful. The species seem inexhaustible, and probably not one-half of those which exist in this country are yet discovered. We did not fall in with any of the large and remarkable insects of South America, such as the rhinoceros or harlequin beetles, but saw numerous specimens of a large Mantis, or praying insect, and also several of the large Mygale, or bird-catching spiders, which are here improperly called "tarantulas," and are said to be very venomous. We found one which had a nest on a silk cotton-tree, formed like the web of some of our house-spiders, as a place of concealment, but of a very strong texture, almost like silk. Other species live in holes in the ground. Beetles and flies were generally very scarce, and, with few exceptions, of small size, but bees and wasps were abundant, and many of them very large and handsome. Mosquitoes, in the low parts of the city and on shipboard, are very annoying, but on the higher grounds and in the suburbs there are none. The moqueen, a small red tick, scarcely visible—the "bête rouge" of Cayenne—abounds in the grass, and, getting on the legs, is very irritating; but these are trifles which one soon gets used to, and in fact would hardly think oneself in the tropics without them.

      Of birds we at first saw but few, and those not very remarkable ones. The only brilliant-coloured bird common about the city is the yellow troupial (Cassicus icteronotus), which builds its nests in colonies, suspended from the ends of the branches of trees. A tree is sometimes covered with their long purse-like nests, and the brilliant black and yellow birds flying in and out have a pretty effect. This bird has a variety of loud clear notes, and has an extraordinary power of imitating the song of other birds, so as to render it worthy of the title of the South American mocking-bird. Besides this, the common silver-beak tanager (Rhamphocœlus jacapa), some pale blue tanagers, called here "Sayis," and the yellow-breasted tyrant flycatchers are the only conspicuous birds common in the suburbs of Pará. In the forest are constantly heard the curious notes of the bush-shrikes, tooo-too-to-to-t-t-t, each succeeding sound quicker and quicker, like the successive reboundings of a hammer from an anvil. In the dusk of the evening many goat-suckers fly about and utter their singular and melancholy cries. One says "Whip-poor-will," just like the North American bird so called, and another with remarkable distinctness keeps asking, "Who are you?" and as their voices often alternate, an interesting though rather monotonous conversation takes place between them.

      The climate, so far as we had yet experienced, was delightful. The thermometer did not rise above 87° in the afternoon, nor sink below 74° during the night. The mornings and evenings were most agreeably cool, and we had generally a shower and a fine breeze in the afternoon, which was very refreshing, and purified the air. On moonlight evenings till eight o'clock ladies walk about the streets and suburbs without any headdress and in ball-room attire, and