CHAPTER XVI.

One of the first persons I saw in London was Hubert Rookwood, who,

when he heard (for being Basil's brother I would not conceal it from

him) that my father was in prison at Bridewell, expressed so much

concern therein and resentment of my grief, that I was thereby moved

to more kindly feelings toward him than I had of late entertained. He

said that in the houses of the law which he frequented he had made

friends which he hoped would intercede in his behalf, and therein

obtain, if not his release, yet so much alleviation of the hardships

of a common prison as should render his condition more tolerable, and

that he would lose no time in seeking to move them thereunto; but that

our chief hope would lie in Sir Francis Walsingham, who, albeit much

opposed to papists, had always showed himself willing to assist his

friends of that way of thinking, and often procured for them some

relief, which indeed none had more experienced than Mr. Congleton

himself. Hubert commended the secrecy which had been observed touching

my father's real name; for if he should be publicly known to be

possessed of lands and related to noble families, it should be harder

for any one to get him released than an obscure person; but

nevertheless he craved license to intimate so much of the truth to Sir

Francis as should appear convenient, for he had always observed that

gentlemen are more compassionate to those of their own rank than to

others of meaner birth. Mr. Congleton prayed him to use his own

discretion therein, and said he should acquaint no one himself of it

except his very good friend the Portuguese ambassador, who, if all

other resources failed, might yet obtain of the queen herself some

mitigation of his sentence. Thereupon followed some days of weary

watching and waiting, in which my only comfort was Mistress Ward, who,

by means of the gaoler's wife, who had obliged her in the like manner

before, did get access from time to time to Mr. Watson, and brought

him necessaries. From him she discovered that the prisoner in the

nearest cell to his own was the so-called Mr. Tunstall, and that by

knocks against the wall, ingeniously numbered so as to express the

letters of the alphabet, as one for _a_, two for _b_, and so to the

end thereof, they did communicate. So she straightway began to

practice this management; but time allowed not of many speeches to

pass between them. Yet in this way he sent me his blessing, and that

he was of very good cheer; but that none should try for to visit him,

for he had only one fear, which was to bring others into trouble; and,

for himself, he was much beholden to her majesty, which had provided

him with a quiet lodging and time to look to his soul's welfare; {170}

which evidence of his cheerful and pious spirit comforted me not a

little. Then that dear friend which had brought me this good comfort

spoke of Mr. Watson, and said she desired to procure his escape from

prison more than that of any other person in the same plight, not

excepting my father. "For, good Constance," quoth she, "when a man is

blest with a stout heart and cheerful mind, except it be for the sake

of others, I pray you what kind of service do you think we render him

by delaying the victory he is about to gain, and peradventure

depriving him of the long-desired crown of martyrdom? But this good

Mr. Watson, who as you well know was a zealous priest and pious

missioner, nevertheless, some time after his apprehension and

confinement in Bridewell, by force of torments and other miseries of

that place, was prevailed upon to deny his faith so far as to go once

to the Protestant service--not dragged there by force as some have

been, but compelled thereunto by fear of intolerable sufferings, and

was then set at liberty. But the poor man did not thus better his

condition; for the torments of his mind, looking on himself as an

apostate and traitor to the Church, he found to be more insupportable

than any sufferings his gaolers put upon him. So, after some miserable

weeks, he went to one of the prisons where some other priests were

confined for to seek comfort and counsel from them; and, having

confessed his fault with great and sincere sorrow, he received

absolution, and straightway repaired to that church in Bridewell

wherein he had in a manner denied his faith, and before all the people

at that time therein assembled, declared himself a Catholic, and

willing to go to prison and to death sooner than to join again in

Protestant worship. Whereupon he was laid hold of, dragged to prison,

and thrown into a dungeon so low and so straight that he could neither

stand up in it nor lay himself down at his full length to sleep. They

loaded him with irons, and kept him one whole month on bread and

water; nor would suffer any one to come near him to comfort or speak

with him."

"Alas!" I cried, "and is this, then, the place where my father is

confined?'

"No,", she answered; "after the space of a month Mr. Watson was

translated to a lodging at the top of the house, wherein the prisoners

are leastways able to stretch their limbs and to see the light; but he

having been before prevailed on to yield against his conscience

touching that point of going to Protestant worship, no peace is left

to him by his persecutors, which never cease to urge on him some sort

of conformity to their religion. And, Constance, when a man hath once

been weak, what security can there be, albeit I deny not hope, that he

shall always after stand firm?"

"But by what means," I eagerly asked, '"do you forecast to procure his

escape?"

"I have permission," she answered, "to bring him necessaries, which I

do in a basket, on condition that I be searched at going in and coming

out, for to make sure I convey not any letter unto him or from him;

and this was so strictly observed the first month that they must needs

break open the loaves or pies I take to him lest any paper should be

conveyed inside. But they begin now to weary of this strict search,

and do not care at ways to hearken when I speak with him; so he could

tell me the last time I did visit him that he had found a way by which

if he had but a cord long enough for his purpose, he could let himself

down from the top of the house, and so make his escape in the night."

"Oh," I cried, "dear Mistress Ward, but this is a perilous venture, to

aid a prisoner's escape. One which a daughter might run for her

father, oh, how willingly, but for a stranger--"

"A stranger!" she answered. "Is he a stranger for whom Christ died,

and whose precious soul is in danger. {171} even if not a priest; and

being so, is he not entitled to more than common reverence, chiefly in

these days when God's servants minister to us in the midst of such

great straits to both soul and body?'

"I cry God mercy," I said; "I did term him a stranger who gave ghostly

comfort to my dear mother on her death-bed; but oh, dear Mistress

Ward, I thought on your peril, who, he knoweth, hath been as a mother

to me for these many years. And then-if you are resolved to run this

danger, should it not be possible to save my father also by the same

means? Two cords should not be more difficult to convey, methinks,

than one, and the peril not greater."

"If I could speak with him," she replied, "it would not be impossible.

I will tell Muriel to make two instead of one of these cords, which

she doth twine in some way she learnt from a Frenchman, so strong as,

albeit slight, to have the strength of a cable. But without we do

procure two men with a boat for to fetch the prisoners when they

descend, 'tis little use to make the attempt. And it be easier, I

warrant thee, Constance, to run one's self into a manifest danger than

to entice others to the like."

"Should it be safe," I asked, "to speak thereon to Hubert Rookwood? He

did exhibit this morning much zeal in my father's behalf, and promised

to move Sir Francis Walsingham to procure his release."

"How is he disposed touching religion? she asked, in a doubtful

manner.

"Alas!" I answered, "there is a secrecy in his nature which in more

ways than one doth prove unvestigable, leastways to me; but when he

comes this evening I will sound him thereon. Would his brother were in

London! Then we should not lack counsel and aid in this matter."

"We do sorely need both," she answered; "for your good uncle, than

which a better man never lived, wanes feeble in body, and hence easily

overcome by the fears such enterprises involve. Mr. Wells is not in

London at this tune, or he should have been a very palladium of

strength in this necessity. Hubert Rookwood hath, I think, a good

head."

"What we do want is a brave heart," I replied, thinking on Basil.

"But wits also," she said.

"Basil hath them too," I answered, forgetting that only in mine own

thinking had he been named.

"Yea," she cried, "who doth doubt it? but, alas! he is not here."

Then I prayed her not to be too rash in the prosecution of her design.

"Touching my father," I said, "I have yet some hope of his release;

and as long as any remaineth, flight should be methinks a too

desperate attempt to be thought of."

"Yea," she answered, "in most cases it would be so." But Mr. Watson's

disposition she perceived to be such as would meet a present danger

and death itself, she thought, with courage, but not of that stamp

which could endure prolonged fears or infliction of torments.

Since my coming to London I had been too much engaged in these weighty

cares to go abroad; but on that day I resolved, if it were possible,

to see my Lady Surrey. A report had reached me that the breach between

her and her husband had so much deepened that a separation had ensued,

which if true, I, which knew her as well almost as mine own self,

could judge what her grief must be. I was also moved to this endeavor

by the hope that if my Lord Arundel was not too sick to be spoken

with, she should perhaps obtain some help through his means for that

dear prisoner whose captivity did weigh so heavily on my heart.

So, with a servant to attend on me, I went through the city to the

Chapter-house, and with a misgiving mind heard from the porter that

Lady Surrey lodged not there, but at Arundel House, whither she had

removed soon after her coming to London. {172} Methought that in the

telling of it this man exhibited a sorrowful countenance; but not

choosing to question one of his sort on so weighty a matter, I went on

to Arundel House, where, after some delay, I succeeded in gaining

admittance to Lady Surrey's chamber, whose manner, when she first saw

me, lacked the warmth which I was used to in her greetings. There

seemed some fear in her lest I should speak unadvisedly that which she

would be loth to hear; and her strangeness and reserve methinks arose

from reluctance to have the wound in her heart probed,--too sore a

one, I ween, even for the tender handling of a friend. I inquired of

her if my Lord Arundel's health had improved. She said he was better,

and like soon to be as well as could be hoped for now-a-days, when his

infirmities had much increased.

"Then you will return to Kenninghall?" I said, letting my speech

outrun discretion.

"No," she replied; "I purpose never more to leave my Lord Arundel or

my Lady Lumley as long as they do live, which I pray God may be many

years."

And then she sat without speaking, biting her lips and wringing the

kerchief she held in her hands, as if to keep her grief from

outbursting. I dared not to comment on her resolve, for I foresaw that

the least word which should express some partaking of her sorrow, or

any question relating to it, would let loose a torrent weakly stayed

by a mightful effort, not like to be of long avail. So I spoke of mine

own troubles, and the events which had occasioned my sudden departure

from Lynn Court. She had heard of Lady l'Estrange's mishap, and that

the following day I had journeyed to London; but naught of the causes

thereof, or of the apprehension of any priest by Sir Hammond's orders.

Which, when she learnt the manner of this misfortune, and the poor

lady's share therein, and that it was my father she had thus

unwittingly discovered, her countenance softened, and throwing her

arms round my neck, she bitterly wept, which at that moment methinks

did her more good than anything else.

"Oh, mine own good Constance," she said, "I doubt not nature riseth

many passionate workings in your soul at this time; but, my dear

wench, when good men are in trouble our grief for them should be as

noble as their virtues. Bethink thee what a worst sorrow it should be

to have a vile father, one that thou must needs love,--for who can

tear out of his heart affection strong as life?--and he should then

prove unworthy. Believe me, Constance, God gives to each, even in this

world, a portion of their deserts. Such griefs as thy present one I

take to be rare instances of his favor. Other sorts of trials are meet

for cowardly souls which refuse to set their lips to a chalice of

suffering, and presently find themselves submerged in a sea of woes.

But can I help thee, sweet one? Is there aught I can do to lighten thy

affliction? Hast thou license for to see thy father?"

"No, dear lady," I answered; "and his name being concealed, I may not

petition as his daughter for this permission; but if my Lord Arundel

should be so good a lord to me as to obtain leave for me to visit this

prisoner, without revealing his name and condition, he should do me

the greatest benefit in the world."

"I will move him thereunto," my lady said. "But he who had formerly no

equal in the queen's favor, and to whom she doth partly owe her crown,

is now in his sickness and old age of so little account in her eyes,

that trifling favors are often denied him to whom she would once have

said: 'Ask of me what thou wilt, and I will give it unto thee.' But

what my poor endeavors can effect through him or others shall not be

lacking in this thy need. But I am not in that condition I was once

like to have enjoyed." Then with her eyes cast on the ground she

seemed for to doubt if she should {173} speak plainly, or still shut

up her grief in silence. As I sat painfully expecting her next words,

the door opened, and two ladies were announced, which she whispered in

mine ear she would fain not have admitted at that time, but that Lord

Arundel's desire did oblige her to entertain them. One was Mistress

Bellamy, and the other her daughter, Mistress Frances, a young

gentlewoman of great beauty and very lively parts, which I had once

before seen at Lady Ingoldsby's house. She was her parents' sole

daughter, and so idolized by them that they seemed to live only to

minister to her fancies. Lord Arundel was much bounden to this family

by ancient ties of friendship, which made him urgent with his

granddaughter that she should admit them to her privacy. I admired in

this instance how suddenly those which have been used to exercise such

self-command as high breeding doth teach can school their exterior to

seem at ease, and even of good cheer, when most ill at ease

interiorly, and with hearts very heavy. Lady Surrey greeted these

visitors with as much courtesy, and listened to their discourse with

as much civility and smiles when called for, as if no burthensome

thoughts did then oppress her.

Many and various themes were touched upon in the random talk which

ensued. First, that wonted one of the queen's marriage, which some

opined should verily now take place with Monsieur d'Alençon; for that

since his stealthy visits to England, she did wear in her bosom a

brooch of jewels in a frog's shape.

"Ay," quoth Mistress Frances, "that stolen visit which awoke the ire

of the poor soul Stubbs, who styled it 'an unmanlike, unprincelike,

French kind of wooing,' and endeth his book of 'The Gaping Gulph' in a

loyal rage: 'Here is, therefore, an imp of the crown of France, to

marry the crowned nymph of England,'--a nymph indeed well stricken in

years. My brother was standing by when Stubbs' hand was cut off; for

nothing else would content that sweet royal nymph, albeit the lawyers

stoutly contended the statute under which he suffered to be null and

void. As soon as his right hand is off, the man takes his hat off with

the left, and cries 'God bless the queen!'"

"Here is a wonder," I exclaimed; "I pray you, what is the art this

queen doth possess by which she holdeth the hearts of her subjects in

so great thrall, albeit so cruel to them which do offend her?"

"Lady Harrington hath told me her majesty's own opinion thereon," said

Mrs. Bellamy; "for one day she did ask her in a merry sort, 'How she

kept her husband's good-will and love?' To which she made reply that

she persuaded her husband of her affection, and in so doing did

command his. Upon which the queen cries out, 'Go to, go to, Mistress

Moll! you are wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the good

wills of all my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest

assured of some special love toward them, they would not readily yield

me such good obedience.'"

"Tut, tut!" cried Mistress Frances; "all be not such fools as John

Stubbs; and she knoweth how to take rebukes from such as she doth not

dare to offend. By the same token that Sir Philip Sydney hath written

to dissuade her from this French match, and likewise Sir Francis

Walsingham, which last did hint at her advancing years; and her

highness never so much as thought of striking off their hands. But I

warrant you a rebellion shall arise if this queen doth issue such

prohibitions as she hath lately done."

"Of what sort?" asked Lady Surrey.

"First, to forbid," Mrs. Bellamy said, "any new building to be raised

within three thousand paces of the gates of London on pain of

imprisonment, and sundry other penalties; or for more than one family

to inhabit in one house. For her majesty holds it {174} should be an

impossible thing to govern or maintain order in a city larger than

this London at the present time."

Mistress Frances declared this law to be more tolerable than the one

against the size of ladies' ruffs, which were forsooth not to exceed a

certain measure; and officers appointed for to stand at the comers of

streets and to clip such as overpassed the permitted dimensions, which

sooner than submit to she should die.

Lady Surrey smiled, and said she should have judged so from the size

of her fine ruff.

"But her majesty is impartial," quoth Mrs. Bellamy; "for the

gentlemen's rapiers are served in the same manner. And verily this law

hath nearly procured a war with France; for in Smithfield Lane some

clownish constables stayed M. de Castelnau, and laid hands on his

sword for to shorten it to the required length. I leave you to judge.

Lady Surrey, of this ambassador's fury. Sir Henry Seymour, who was

tidying the air in Smithfield at the time, perceived him standing with

the drawn weapon in his hand, threatening to kill whosoever should

approach him, and destruction on this realm of England if the officers

should dare to touch his sword again; and this with such frenzy of

speech in French mixed with English none could understand, that God

knoweth what should have ensued if Sir Henry had not interfered. Her

majesty was forced to make an apology to this mounseer for that her

officers had ignorantly attempted to clip the sword of her good

brother's envoy."

"Why doth she not clip," Mistress Frances said, "if such be her

present humor, the orange manes of her gray Dutch horses, which are

the frightfullest things in the world?"

"Tis said," quoth Mrs. Bellamy, "that a new French embassy is soon

expected, with the dauphin of Auvergne at its head."

"Yea," cried her daughter, "and four handsome English noblemen to meet

them at the Tower stairs, and conduct them to the new banqueting-house

at Westminster,--my Lord Surrey, Lord Windsor, Sir Philip Sydney, and

Sir Fulke Greville. Methinks this should be a very fine sight, if rain

doth not fall to spoil it."

I saw my Lady Surrey's countenance change when her husband was

mentioned; and Mrs. Bellamy looked at her daughter forasmuch as to

check her thoughtless speeches, which caused this young lady to glance

round the room, seeking, as it seemed, for some other topic of

conversation.

Methinks I should not have preserved so lively a recollection of the

circumstances of this visit if some dismal tidings which reached me

afterward touching this gentlewoman, then so thoughtless and innocent,

had not revived in me the memory of her gay prattle, bright unabashed

eyes, and audacious dealing with subjects so weighty and dangerous,

that any one less bold should have feared to handle them. After the

pause which ensued on the mention of Lord Surrey's name, she took for

her text what had been said touching the prohibitions lately issued

concerning ruffs and rapiers, and began to mock at her majesty's

favorites; yea, and to mimic her majesty herself with so much humor

that her well-acted satire must have needs constrained any one to

laugh. Then, not contented with these dangerous jests, she talked such

direct treason against her highness as to say she hoped to see her

dethroned, and a fair Catholic sovereign to reign in her stead, who

would be less shrewish to young and handsome ladies. Then her mother

cried her, for mercy's sake, to restrain her mad speech, which would

serve one day to bring them all into trouble, for all she meant it in

jest.

"Marry, good mother," she answered, "not in jest at all; for I do

verily hold myself bound to no allegiance to this queen, and would

gladly see her get her deserts."

Then Lady Surrey prayed her not to speak so rashly; but methought in

{175} her heart, and somewhat I could perceive of this in her eyes,

she misliked not wholly this young lady's words, who then spoke of

religion; and oh, how zealous therein she did appear, how boldly

affirmed (craving Lady Surrey's pardon, albeit she would warrant, she

said, there was no need to do so, her ladyship she had heard being

half a papist herself) that she had as lief be racked twenty times

over and die also, or her face to be so disfigured that none should

call her ever after anything but a fright--which martyrdom she held

would exceed any yet thought of--than so much as hold her tongue

concerning her faith, or stay from telling her majesty to her face, if

she should have the chance to get speech with her, that she was a foul

heretic, and some other truths beside, which but once to utter in her

presence, come of it what would, should be a delicious pleasure. Then

she railed at the Catholics which blessed the queen before they

suffered for their religion, proving them wrong with ingenious reasons

and fallacious arguments mixed with pleasantries not wholly becoming

such grave themes. But it should have seemed as reasonable to be angry

with a child babbling at random of life and death in the midst of its

play, as with this creature, the lightest of heart, the fairest in

face, the most winsome in manner, and most careless of danger, that

ever did set sail on life's stream.

Oh, how all this rose before me again, when I heard, two years

afterward, that for her bold recusancy--alas! more bold, as the

sequel proved, than deep, more passionate than fervent--this only

cherished daughter, this innocent maiden, the mirror of whose fame no

breath had sullied, and on whose name no shadow had rested, was torn

by the pursuivants from her parents' home, and cast into a prison with

companions at the very aspect of which virtue did shudder. And the

unvaliant courage, the weak bravery, of this indulged and wayward

young lady had no strength wherewith to resist the surging tides of

adversity. No voice of parent, friend, or ghostly father reached her

in that abode of despair. No visible angel visited her, but a fiend in

human form haunted her dungeon. Liberty and pleasure he offered in

exchange for virtue, honor, and faith. She fell; sudden and great was

that fall.

There is a man the name of which hath blenched the cheeks and riven

the hearts of Catholics, one who hath caused many amongst them to lose

their lands and to part from their homes, to die on gibbets and their

limbs to be torn asunder--one Richard Topcliffe. But, methinks, of all

the voices which shall be raised for to accuse him at Christ's

judgment-seat, the loudest will be Frances Bellamy's. Her ruin was his

work; one of those works which, when a man is dead, do follow him;

whither, God knoweth!

Oh, you who saw her, as I did, in her young and innocent years, can

you read this without shuddering? Can you think on it without weeping?

As her fall was sudden, so was the change it wrought. With it vanished

affections, hopes, womanly feelings, memory of the past; nay, methinks

therein I err. Memory did yet abide, but linked with hatred; Satan's

memory of heaven. From depths to depths she hath sunk, and is now

wedded to a mean wretch, the gaoler of her old prison. So rank a

hatred hath grown in her against recusants and mostly priests, that it

rages like a madness in her soul, which thirsts for their blood. Some

months back, about the time I did begin to write this history, news

reached me that she had sold the life of that meek saint, that sweet

poet, Father Southwell, of which even an enemy, Lord Mountjoy, did

say, when he had seen him suffer, "I pray God, where that man's soul

now is, mine may one day be." Her father had concealed him in that

house where she had dwelt in her innocent days. None but the family

knew the secret of its hiding-place. {176}so will be ready in Ireland

She did reveal it, and took gold for her wages! What shall be that

woman's death-bed? What trace doth remain on her soul of what was once

a share in the divine nature? May one of God's ministers be nigh unto

her in that hour for to bid her not despair! If Judas had repented,

Jesus would have pardoned him. Peradventure, misery without hope of

relief overthrew her brain. I do pray for her always. 'Tis a vain

thought perhaps, but I sometimes wish I might, though I see not how to

compass it, yet once speak with her before she or I die. Methinks I

could say such words as should touch some old chord in her dead heart.

God knoweth! That day I write of, little did I ween what her end would

be. But yet it feared me to hear one so young and of so frail an

aspect speak so boastfully; and it seemed even then to my

inexperienced mind, that my Lady Surrey, who had so humbly erewhile

accused herself of cowardice and lamented her weakness, should be in a

safer plight, albeit as yet unreconciled.

The visit I have described had lasted some time, when a servant came

with a message to her ladyship from Mr. Hubert Rookwood, who craved to

be admitted on an urgent matter. She glanced at me somewhat surprised,

upon which I made her a sign that she should condescend to his

request; for I supposed he had seen Sir Francis Walsingham, and was in

haste to confer with me touching that interview; and she ordered him

to be admitted. Mrs. Bellamy and her daughter rose to go soon after

his entrance; and whilst Lady Surrey conducted them to the door he

asked me if her ladyship was privy to the matter in hand. When I had

satisfied him thereof, he related what had passed in an interview he

had with Sir Francis, whom he found ill-disposed at first to stir in

the matter, for he said his frequent remonstrances in favor of

recusants had been like to bring him into odium with some of the more

zealous Protestants, and that he must needs, in every case of that

sort, prove it to be his sole object to bring such persons more

surely, albeit slowly, by means of toleration, to a rightful

conformity; and that with regard to priests he was very loth to

interfere.

"I was compelled," quoth Hubert, "to use such arguments as fell in

with the scope of his discourse, and to flatter him with the hope of

good results in that which he most desired, if he would procure Mr.

Sherwood's release, which I doubt not he hath power to effect. And in

the end he consented to lend his aid therein, on condition he should

prove on his side so far conformable as to suffer a minister to visit

and confer with him touching religion, which would then be a pretext

for his release, as if it were supposed he was well disposed toward

Protestant religion, and a man more like to embrace the truth when at

liberty than if driven to it by stress of confinement. Then he would

procure," he added, "an order for his passage to France, if he

promised not to return, except he should be willing to obey the laws."

"I fear me much," I answered, "my father will not accept these terms

which Sir Francis doth offer. Methinks he will consider they do

involve some lack of the open profession of his faith."

"It would be madness for one in his plight to refuse them," Hubert

exclaimed, and appealed thereon to Lady Surrey, who said she did

indeed think as he did, for it was not like any better could be

obtained.

It pained me he should refer to her, who from conformity to the times

could not well conceive how tender a Catholic conscience should feel

at the least approach to dissembling on this point.

"Wherein," he continued, "is the harm for to confer with a minister,

or how can it be construed into a denial of a man's faith to listen to

his arguments, unless, indeed, he feels himself to be in danger of

being shaken by them?"

"You very well know," I exclaimed {177} with some warmth, "that not to

be my meaning, or what I suppose his should be. Our priests do

constantly crave for public disputations touching religion, albeit

they eschew secret ones, which their adversaries make a pretext of to

spread reports of their inability to defend their faith, or

willingness to abandon it. But heaven forbid I should anyways prejudge

this question; and if with a safe conscience--and with no other I am

assured will he do it--my father doth subscribe to this condition,

then God be praised for it!"

"But you will move him to it, Mistress Constance?" he said.

"If I am so happy," I answered, "as to get speech with him, verily I

will entreat him not to throw away his life, so precious to others, if

so be he can save it without detriment to his conscience."

"Conscience!" Hubert exclaimed, "methinks that word is often

misapplied in these days."

"How so?" I asked, investigating his countenance, for I misdoubted his

meaning. Lady Surrey likewise seemed desirous to hear what he should

say on that matter.

"Conscience," he answered, "should make persons, and mostly women,

careful how they injure others, and cause heedless suffering, by a too

great stiffness in refusing conformity to the outward practices which

the laws of the country enforce, when it affects not the weightier

points of faith, which God forbid any Catholic should deny. There is

often as much of pride as of virtue in such rash obstinacy touching

small yieldings as doth involve the ruin of a family, separation of

parents and children, and more evils than can be thought of."

"Hubert," I said, fixing mine eyes on him with a searching look he

cared not, I ween, to meet, for he cast his on a paper he had in his

hand, and raised them not while I spoke, "'sit is by such reasonings

first, and then by such small yieldings as you commend, that some have

been led two or three times in their lives, yea, oftener perhaps, to

profess different religions, and to take such contradictory oaths as

have been by turns prescribed to them under different sovereigns, and

God each time called on to witness their perjuries, whereby truth and

falsehood in matters of faith shall come in time to be words without

any meaning."

Then he: "You do misapprehend me, Mistress Constance, if you think I

would counsel a man to utter a falsehood, or feign to believe that

which in his heart he thinketh to be false. But, in heaven's name, I

pray you, what harm will your father do if he listens to a minister's

discourse, and suffers it to be set forth he doth ponder thereon, and

in the meantime escapes to France? whereas, if he refuses the loophole

now offered to him, he causeth not to himself alone, but to you and

his other friends, more pain and sorrow than can be thought of, and

deprives the Church of one of her servants, when her need of them is

greatest."

I made no reply to this last speech; for albeit I thought my father

would not accede to these terms, I did not so far trust mine own

judgment thereon as to predict with certainty what his answer should

be. And then Hubert said he had an order from Sir Francis that would

admit me on the morrow to see my father; and he offered to go with me,

and Mistress Ward too, if I listed, to present it, albeit I alone

should enter his cell. I thanked him, and fixed the time of our going.

When he had left us, Lady Surrey commended his zeal, and also his

moderate spirit, which did charitably allow, she said, for such as

conformed to the times for the sake of others which their

reconcilement would very much injure.

Before I could reply she changed this discourse, and, putting her

hands on my shoulders and kissing my forehead, said,

"My Lady Lumley hath heard so much from her poor niece of one {178}

Mistress Constance Sherwood, that she doth greatly wish to see this

young gentlewoman and very resolved papist." And then taking me by the

arm she led me to that lady's chamber, where I had as kind a welcome

as ever I received from any one from her ladyship, who said "her dear

Nan's friends should be always as dear to her as her own," and added

many fine commendations greatly exceeding my deserts.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

------

From The London Quarterly Review.

GLEANINGS FROM THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE TROPICS.

ART. VI.--1. _A Narrative Of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro,

etc._By Alfred R. Wallace. London: 1853.

2. _Himalayan Journals; or, Notes of a Naturalist in Bengal, the

Sikkim, and Nepal Himalayas_. By Joseph D. Hooker, M.D., R.N., F.R.S.

London: 1854.

3. _Three Visits to Madagascar during the Years_1853, 1854, 1856,

_with Notices of the Natural History of the Country, etc._ By the Rev.

W. Ellis, F.H.S. London: 1859.

4. _The Tropical World: A Popular Scientific Account of the Natural

History of the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms._By Dr. G. Hartwig.

London: 1863.

5. _The Naturalist on the River Amazons: A Record of Adventures,

Habits of Animals, etc., during eleven Years of Travel._ By Henry

Walter Bates. London: 1863.

The naturalist will never have to complain, with Alexander, that he

has no more worlds to conquer, so inexhaustible is the wide field of

nature, and so numerous are the vast areas which as yet have never at

all, or only partially, been explored by travellers. What may not be

in store for some future adventurer in little known regions; what new

and wonderful forms of animals and plants may not reward the zealous

traveller, when no less than eight thousand species of animals new to

science have been discovered by Mr. Bates during his eleven years'

residence on the Amazons? Nor is it alone new forms of animated nature

that await the enterprise of the naturalist; a whole mine of valuable

material, the working of which is attended with the greatest pleasure,

lies before him in the discovery of new facts with regard to the

habits, structure, and local distribution of animals and plants. It is

almost impossible to exaggerate the importance to the philosophic

naturalist of such studies in these days of thought and progress. The

collector of natural curiosities may be content with the possession of

a miscellaneous lot of objects, but the man of science pursues his

investigations with a view of discovering, if possible, some of those

wonderful laws which govern the organic world, some of the footprints

of the Creator in the production of the countless forms of animal and

vegetable life with which this beautiful world abounds.

We purpose in this article to bring before the reader's notice a few

gleanings from the natural history of the tropics, merely surmising

that we shall linger with more than ordinary pleasure over the

productions of tropical {179} South America, of which Mr. Bates has

charmingly and most instructively written in his recently published

work, whose title is given at the head of this article; we shall pause

to admire, with Dr. Hooker, some of the productions of the mighty

Himalayan mountains; and we may also visit Madagascar in company with

so trustworthy a traveller as Mr. Ellis.

The ancients, before the time of Alexander's Indian expedition, were

unacquainted with any tropical forms of plants, and great was their

astonishment when they first beheld them:

"Gigantic forms of plants and animals," as Humboldt says, "filled the

imagination with exciting imagery. Writers from whose severe and

scientific style any degree of inspiration is elsewhere entirely

absent, become poetical when describing the habits of the

elephant,--the height of the trees, 'to the summit of which an arrow

cannot reach, and whose leaves are broader then the shields of

infantry,'--the bamboo, a light, feathery, arborescent grass, of which

single joints (_internodia_) served as four-oared boats,--and the

Indian fig-tree, whose pendant branches take root around the parent

stem, which attains a diameter of twenty-eight feet, 'forming,' as

Onesicritus expresses himself with great truth to nature, 'a leafy

canopy similar to a many-pillared tent.'" [Footnote 24]

[Footnote 24: "Cosmos," vol. ii., p. 155. Sabine's translation ]

It is not possible for language to describe the glory of the forests

of the Amazon, and yet the silence and gloom of the Brazilian forests,

so often mentioned by travellers, are striking realities. Let us read

Mr. Bates's impressions of the interior of a primeval forest:

"The silence and gloom," he says, "are realities, and the impression

deepens on a longer acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that

pensive and mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of

solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness.

Sometimes in the midst of the stillness a sudden yell or scream will

startle one; this comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal

which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or stealthy boa-constrictor.

Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and

harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one's buoyancy

of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is

calculated to inspire is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar.

Often even in the still hours of mid-day a sudden crash will be heard

resounding afar through the wilderness, as some great bough or entire

tree falls to the ground. There are beside many sounds which it is

impossible to account for. I found the natives generally as much at a

loss in this respect as myself. Sometimes a sound is heard like the

clang of an iron bar against a hard hollow tree, or a piercing cry

rends the air; these are not repeated, and the succeeding silence

tends to heighten the unpleasant impression which they make on the

mind. With the natives it is always the curupira, the wild man, or

spirit of the forest, which produces all noises they are unable to

explain."

Mr. Bates has some exceedingly interesting observations on the

tendency of animals and plants of the Brazilian forests to become

climbers. Speaking of a swampy forest of Pará he says:

"The leafy crowns of the trees, scarcely two of which could be seen

together of the same kind, were now far away above us, in another

world as it were. We could only see at times, where there was a

break above, the tracery of the foliage against the clear blue sky.

Sometimes the leaves were palmate, at others finely cut or feathery

like the leaves of mimosae. Below, the tree trunks were everywhere

linked together by sipos; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and

creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that

of the latter {180} independent trees. Some were twisted in strands

like cables, others had thick stems contorted in every variety of

shape, entwining snake-like round the tree-trunks, or forming

gigantic loops and coils among the larger branches; others again

were of zigzag shape or indented like the steps of a staircase,

sweeping from the ground to a giddy height."

Of these climbing plants he adds:

"It interested me much afterward to find these climbing trees do not

form any particular family or genus. There is no order of plants

whose especial habit is to climb, but species of many of the most

diverse families, the bulk of whose members are not climbers, seem

to have been driven by circumstances to adopt this habit. The orders

Leguminosae, Guttifenae, Bignoniaceae, Moraceae, and others, furnish

the greater number. There is even a climbing genus of palms

(_Desmoncus_), the species of which are called in the Tupí language

Jacitára. These have slender, thickly-spined, and flexuous stems,

which twine about the latter trees from one to the other, and grow

to an incredible length. The leaves, which have the ordinary pinnate

shape characteristic of the family, are emitted from the stems at

long intervals, instead of being collected into a dense crown, and

have at their tips a number of long recurved spines. These

structures are excellent contrivances to enable the trees to secure

themselves by in climbing, but they are a great nuisance to the

traveller, for they sometimes hang over the pathway and catch the

hat or clothes, dragging off the one or tearing the other as he

passes. The number and variety of climbing trees in the Amazon

forests are interesting, taken in connection with the fact of the

very general tendency of the animals also to become climbers."

Of this tendency amongst animals Mr. Bates thus writes:

"All the Amazonian, and in fact all South American monkeys, are

climbers. There is no group answering to the baboons of the old

world, which live on the ground. The gallinaceous birds of the

country, the representatives of the fowls and pheasants of Asia and

Africa, are all adapted by the position of the toes to perch on

trees, and it is only on trees, at a great height, that they are to

be seen. A genus of Plantigrade Carnivora, allied to the bears

(_Cercoleptes_), found only in the Amazonian forests, is entirely

arboreal, and has a long flexible tail like that of certain monkeys.

Many other similar instances could be enumerated, but I will mention

only the Geodephaga, or carnivorous ground beetles, a great

proportion of whose genera and species in these forest regions are,

by the structure of their feet, fitted to live exclusively on the

branches and leaves of trees."

Strange to the European must be the appearance of the numerous woody

lianas, or air-roots of the parasitic plants of the family _Araceae_

of which the well-known cuckoo-pint, or _Arum maculatum_, of this

country is a non-epiphytous member, which sit on the branches of the

trees above, and "hang down straight as plumb-lines," some singly,

others in leashes; some reaching half-way to the ground, others

touching it, and taking root in the ground. Here, too, in these

forests of Pará, beside palms of various species, "some twenty to

thirty feet high, others small and delicate, with stems no thicker

than a finger," of the genus _Bactris_, producing bunches of fruit

with grape-like juice, masses of a species of banana (_Urania

Amizonica_), a beautiful plant with leaves "like broad

sword-blades," eight feet long, and one foot broad, add fresh

interest to the scene. These leaves rise straight upward alternately

from the top of a stem five or six feet high. Various kinds of

Marants, a family of plants rich in amylaceous qualities (of which

the _Maranta arundinacea_, though not an American plant, yields the

best arrowroot of commerce), clothe the ground, conspicuous for

their {181} broad glossy leaves. Ferns of beautiful and varied forms

decorate the tree-trunks, together with the large fleshy

heart-shaped leaves of the Pothos plant. Gigantic grasses, such as

bamboos, form arches over the pathways. "The appearance of this part

of the forest was strange in the extreme, description can convey no

adequate idea of it. The reader who has visited Kew, may form some

notion by conceiving a vegetation like that in the great palm-house

spread over a large tract of swampy ground, but he must fancy it

mingled with large exogenous trees, similar to our oaks and elms,

covered with creepers and parasites, and figure to himself the

ground encumbered with fallen and rotting trunks, branches, and

leaves, the whole illuminated by a glowing vertical sun, and reeking

with moisture!" Amid these "swampy shades" numerous butterflies

delight to flit. An entomologist in England is proud, indeed, when

he succeeds in capturing the beautiful and scarce Camberwell beauty

(_Vanessa antiopa_) or the splendid purple emperor (_Apatura iris_),

but these fine species do not exceed three inches in expanse of

wing, while the glossy blue-and-black _Morpho Achilles_ measure six

inches or more. The velvety black _Papiloio Sesostris_, with a large

silky green patch on its wings, and other species of this genus, are

almost exclusively inhabitants of the moist shades of the forest.

The beautiful _Epicalea ancea_, "one of the most richly colored of

the whole tribe of butterflies, being black, decorated with broad

stripes of pale blue and orange, delights to settle on the broad

leaves of the Uraniae and other similar plants." But like many other

natural beauties, it is difficult to gain possession of, darting off

with lightning speed when approached. Mr. Bates tells us that it is

the males only of the different species which are brilliantly

colored, the females being plainer and often so utterly unlike their

partners that they are generally held to be different species until

proved to be the same. The observations of this admirable naturalist

on other points in the history of the butterflies of the Amazons,

are highly important and deeply interesting. We must recur to this

subject by-and-by.

We cannot yet tear ourselves away from these forests of Pará. We can

well understand the intense interest with which Mr. Bates visited

these different scenes month after month, in different seasons, so as

to obtain something like a fair notion of their animal and vegetable

productions. It is enough to make a naturalist's mouth water for a

week together to think of the many successful strolls which Mr. Bates

took amid the shades of these forests. For several months, he tells

us, he used to visit this district two or three days every week, and

never failed to obtain some species new to him of bird, reptile, or

insect:

"This district," he says, "seemed to be an epitome of all that the

humid portions of the Pará forest could produce. This endless

diversity, the coolness of the air, the varied and strange forms of

vegetation, the entire freedom from mosquitoes and other pests, and

even the solemn gloom and silence, combined to make my rambles

through it always pleasant as well as profitable. Such places are

paradises to a naturalist, and if he be of a contemplative turn

there is no situation more favorable for his indulging the tendency.

There is something in a tropical forest akin to the ocean in its

effects on the mind--man feels so completely his insignificance

there and the vastness of nature. A naturalist cannot help

reflecting on the vegetable forces manifested on so grand a scale

around him."

Mr. Wallace and Mr. Bates are well-known advocates of Mr. Darwin's

theory of natural selection. The former gentleman was Mr. Bates's

companion in travel for four years, and he has published a very

interesting account of his voyage on his return to England. Whatever

differences of opinion there may be with respect to {182} the

celebrated work which Mr. Darwin gave to the world four or five years

ago, unbiassed and thoughtful naturalists must recognize the force

with which the author supports many of his arguments, and the fairness

with which he encounters every difficulty. The competition displayed

by organized beings is strikingly manifested in the Brazilian forests.

So unmistakable is this fact, that Burmeister, a German traveller, was

painfully impressed with the contemplation of the emulation and

"spirit of restless selfishness" which the vegetation of a tropical

forest displayed. "He thought the softness, earnestness, and repose of

European woodland scenery were far more pleasing, and that these

formed one of the causes of the superior moral character of European

nations;" a curious question, which we leave to the consideration of

moral philosophers. The emulation displayed by the plants and trees of

the forests of Pará is thus spoken of by Mr. Bates:

"In these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving

to outvie its fellow, struggling upward toward light and

air--branch, and leaf, and stem--regardless of its neighbors.

Parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making

use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own

advancement. Live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in

these wildernesses. There is one kind of parasitic tree very common

near Pará which exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. It

is called the Sipó Matador, or the Murderer Liana. It belongs to the

fig order, and has been described by Von Martins in the 'Atlas to

Spix and Martius's Travels.' I observed many specimens. The base of

its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth; it

is obliged, therefore, to support itself on a tree of another

species. In this it is not essentially different from other climbing

trees and plants, but the way the matador sets about it is peculiar,

and produces certainly a disagreeable impression. It springs up

close to the tree on which it intends to fix itself, and the wood of

its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic mould over one

side of the trunk of its supporter. It then puts forth from each

side an arm-like branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a

stream of sap were flowing and hardening as it went. This adheres

closely to the trunk of the victim, and the two arms meet on the

opposite side and blend together. These arms are put forth at

somewhat regular intervals in mounting upward, and the victim when

its strangler is full grown becomes tightly clasped by a number of

inflexible rings. These rings gradually grow larger as the murderer

flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with

that of its neighbor, and in course of time they kill it by stopping

the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle then remains of the

selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body

of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. Its ends

have been served--it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and

disseminated its kind; and now when the dead trunk moulders away,

its own end approaches; its support is gone, and itself also falls."

The strangling properties of some of the fig-tree family are indeed

very remarkable, and may be witnessed not only in South America, but

in India, Ceylon, and Australia. Frazer observed several kinds of

_Ficus_, more than 150 feet high, embracing huge ironbark trees in the

forests at Moreton Bay. The _Ficus repens_, according to Sir Emerson

Tennent, is often to be seen clambering over rocks, like ivy, turning

through heaps of stones, or ascending some tall tree to the height of

thirty or forty feet, while the thickness of its own stem does not

exceed a quarter of an inch. The small plants of this family, of which

the Murdering Liana is one species, grow and reproduce their kind from

seeds {183} deposited in the ground; but the huge representatives of

the family, such as the banyan-tree, whose

"Bended twigs take root, and daughters grow

About the mother tree;"

and the Peepul, or sacred Bo-tree of the Buddhists (_Ficus

religiosa_), originate from seeds carried by birds to upper portions

of some palm or other tree. Fig-trees, as Sir E. Tennent has remarked,

are "the Thugs of the vegetable world; for, though not necessarily

epiphytic, it may be said that, in point of fact, no single plant

comes to perfection or acquires even partial development without the

destruction of some other on which to fix itself as its supporter."

The mode of growth of these trees is well described by the excellent

writer just mentioned, and we shall make use of his own language:

"The family generally make their first appearance as slender roots

hanging from the crown or trunk of some other tree, generally a

palm, among the moist bases of whose leaves the seed carried thither

by some bird which had fed upon the fig begins to germinate. This

root, branching as it descends, envelops the trunk of the supporting

tree with a net-work of wood, and at length, penetrating the ground,

attains the dimensions of a stem. But, unlike a _stem_, it throws

out no buds or flowers; the true stem, with its branches, its

foliage, and fruit, springs upward from the crown of the tree whence

the root is seen descending; and from it issue the pendulous

rootlets, which on reaching the earth fix themselves firmly, and

form the marvellous growth for which the banyan is so celebrated. In

the depth of this grove the original tree is incarcerated till,

literally strangled by the folds and weight of its resistless

companion, it dies and leaves the fig in undisturbed possession of

its place." [Footnote 25]

[Footnote 25: "Ceylon," i., p. 95]

But not trees alone do these vegetable garrotters embrace in their

fatal grasp, ancient monuments are also destroyed by these formidable

assailants. Sir E. Tennent has given an engraving of a fig-tree on the

ruins at Pollanarrua, in Ceylon, which had fixed itself on the

walls---a curious sight, indeed--"its roots streaming downward over

the ruins as if they had once been fluid, following every sinuosity of

the building and terraces till they reach the earth." An extremely

interesting series of drawings is now to be seen in the Linnean

Society's room at Burlington House, illustrating the mode of growth of

another strangling or murdering tree, of New Zealand, belonging to an

entirely different order from that to which the figs belong

(_Urticaceae_), namely, to one of the _Myrtaceae_. The association of

garrotting habits with those of the stinging nettle family is apt

enough, we may be inclined to think; but it is rather disappointing to

meet with these disagreeable peculiarities in the case of the myrtle

group; but such is the fact: the Rata, or _Metrosideros robusta_--as

we believe is the species---climbs to the summits of mighty trees of

the forest of Wangaroa, and kills them in its iron grasp. But,

notwithstanding these unpleasant impressions which "the reckless

energy of the vegetation might produce" in the traveller's mind, there

is plenty in tropical nature to counteract them:

"There is the incomparable beauty and variety of the foliage, the

vivid color, the richness and exuberance everywhere displayed, which

make the richest woodland scenery in northern Europe a sterile

desert in comparison. But it is especially the enjoyment of life

manifested by individual existences which compensates for the

destruction and pain caused by the inevitable competition. Although

this competition is nowhere more active, and the dangers to which

each individual is exposed nowhere more numerous, yet nowhere is

this enjoyment more vividly displayed."

Mr. Bates mentions a peculiar feature in some of the colossal trees

which here and there monopolize a large {184} space in the forests.

The height of some of these giants he estimates at from 180 to 200

feet, whose "vast dome of foliage rises above the other forest trees

as a domed cathedral does above the other buildings in a city." In

most of the large trees of different species is to be seen "a growth

of buttress-shaped projections around the lower part of their stems.

The spaces between these buttresses--which are generally thin walls of

wood--form spacious chambers, and may be compared to stalls in a

stable; some of them are large enough to hold half-a-dozen persons."

What are these buttresses, how do they originate, and what is their

use? We have already seen how great is the competition amongst the

trees of a primeval forest, and how every square inch is eagerly

battled for by the number of competitors. In consequence of this it is

obvious that lateral growth of roots in the earth is a difficult

matter. "Necessity being the mother of invention," the roots, unable

to expand laterally, "raise themselves ridge-like out of the earth,

growing gradually upward as the increasing height of the tree required

augmented support." A beautiful compensation, truly, and full of deep

interest! As Londoners add upper stories to their houses where

competition has rendered lateral additions impossible, so these

gigantic trees, in order to sustain the massive crown and trunk,

strengthen their roots by upper additions.

One of the most striking features in tropical scenery is the

suddenness with which the leaves and blossoms spring into full beauty.

"Some mornings a single tree would appear in flower amidst what was

the preceding evening a uniform green mass of forest,--a dome of

blossom suddenly created as if by magic." In the early mornings, soon

after dawn, the sky is always without a cloud, the thermometer marking

72° or 73° Fahr. Now all nature is fresh, and the birds in the full

enjoyment of their existence, the "shrill yelping" of the toucans

being frequently heard from their abode amongst the wild fruit-trees

of the forest; flocks of parrots appear in distinct relief against the

blue sky, always two by two, chattering to each other, the pairs being

separated by regular intervals, too high, however, to reveal the

bright colors of their plumage. The greatest heat of the day is about

two o'clock, by which time, the thermometer being 92° or 93° Fahr.,

"every voice of bird or mammal is hushed; only in the trees is heard

at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, which were so

fresh and moist in early morning, now become lax and drooping, and the

flowers shed their petals. The Indian and mulatto inhabitants sleep in

their hammocks, or sit on mats in the shade, too languid even to

talk."

Mr. Bates has given a graphic picture of tropical nature at the

approach of rain:

"First, the cool sea-breeze which commenced to blow about ten

o'clock, and which had increased in force with the increasing power

of the sun, would flag and finally die away. The heat and electric

tension of the atmosphere would then become almost insupportable.

Languor 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 upward,

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. Meanwhile all nature is

refreshed; but heaps of flower petals and fallen leaves are seen

under the trees. Toward evening life revives again, and the ringing

uproar is resumed from bush and tree. {185} The following morning

the son 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 disappointed

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 _Cebidae_, a family of quadrumamous 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 thirty-eight 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 Coaitás is much

esteemed as an article of food by the natives in some parts of the

country. The Indians, we are told, are very fund 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 Museum. This estimable lady, amongst other curiosities of

natural history, affirmed the 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-colored 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:

"In the course of our walk" (between the Tocantins and Cameta) "I

chanced to verify a fact relating to the habits of a large hairy

spider of the genus Mygale, in a manner worth recording. 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 grey 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 judged the two to be male and female. One of them was

quite dead, the other lay under the body of the spider not quite

dead, and was smeared with the filthy liquor or {186} 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 circumstances to

be quite a novelty to the residents here about. The Mygales are

quite common insects; some species make their cells under stones,

others form artistical tunnels in the earth, and some build their

dens in the thatch of houses. The natives call them _Aranhas

carangueijeiras_, or crab spiders. The hairs with which they are

clothed come off when touched, and cause a peculiar and almost

maddening irritation. The first specimen that I killed and prepared

was handled incautiously, and I suffered terribly for three days

afterward. I think this is not owing to any poisonous quality

residing in the hairs, but to their being short and hard, and thus

getting 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."

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 (_AEcodoma 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

first-named kind alone does the real active work. The two last contain

the individuals with the enormous heads; their functions are not

clearly ascertained. In color 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 Saüba, 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 I found an accumulation of such leaves, all circular pieces,

about the size of a sixpence, lying on the pathway, unattended by

the ants, and at some distance from any colony. Such heaps are

always found to be removed when the place is revisited next day. In

course of time I had plenty of opportunities of seeing them at work.

They mount the tree in multitudes, the individuals being all worker

minors. Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts

with its sharp scissor-like jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the

piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a

little heap accumulates until carried off by another relay of

workers; but generally each marches off {187} with the piece it 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 Saüba 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 orange trees and other imported plants.

The leaves which the Saüba 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 laborers place the

leaves in position, covering them with a layer of earthy granules,

which are brought one by one from the soil beneath." The labors 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 Parabyba, at a place where it is as broad as the

Thames at London Bridge. These ants 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 work is done by the worker minor or

small-headed kind. With regard to the function of the large-headed

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 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 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 résistance_ serving as a foil

against onslaughts made on the main body of workers."

But the third order, the subterranean kind, we are told, is the most

curious of all:

"If the top of a small, fresh hillock, one in which the thatching

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 simple eye, of quite different structure from the

ordinary compound eyes on the side of the head. This frontal eye is

totally wanting in the other workers, and is not known in any other

kind of ant. The apparition of these strange creatures from {188}

the cavernous depths of the mine reminded one, when I first observed

them, of the Cyclopes of Homeric fable. They were not very

pugnacious, as I feared they would be, and I had no difficulty in

securing a few with my fingers. I never saw them under any

circumstances than those here related, and what their special

functions may be I cannot divine."

The naturalist traveller, in the midst of much that interests and

delights him, has to put up with a great deal that is annoying, and

Mr. Bates proved no exception to the rule. The first few nights when

at Caripí, he was much troubled with bats; the room where he slept had

not been occupied for several months, and the roof was open to the

tiles and rafters:

"On one night," he says, "I was aroused about midnight by the

rushing noise made by vast hosts of bats sweeping about the room.

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 lain

about well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared amongst

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."

Bats remind us of the vampire, a native of South America, concerning

whose blood-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 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 eyes, 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 Amazon."

That much fable has attached itself to the history of this curious

creature we are perfectly convinced, and that its blood-sucking

peculiarities have been grossly exaggerated we must allow. When this

bat has been said to perform the operation of drawing blood "by

inserting its aculeated tongue [Footnote 26] 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 narrative; but our author's assertion that "the vampire

is the most harmless of all bats" does not tally with the statements

of other naturalists of considerable note. Mr. Wallace says he saw the

effects of the vampire's 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 down from

several wounds on its back and sides:

[Footnote 26: An Expression used by Mr. Wood in his "Zoögraphy.'

It is enough to remark that no known bat has an aculeated.]

"The appearance," Mr. Wallace adds, "was, however, I dare say, worse

than 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 {189} 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." [Footnote 27]

[Footnote 27: "Travels on the Amazon," p. 44.]

Both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Waterton, if we remember rightly, have borne

similar testimony in favor 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

[Footnote 28] slept many months in an open loft which the 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."

[Footnote 28: Since this article was in type this excellent

naturalist and kind-hearted gentleman has passed away from amongst

us.]

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 gad-fly, which fixes on the flesh of man as

breeding-places for its grub, and causes painful tumors. "Ega was a

fine field for a natural history collector," and Mr. Bates ticketed

with the name of this town more than 3,000 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 color 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 {190} glance; the buff-tip moth, when at rest,

looks just like a broken bit of lichen-covered branch, the colored

tips of the wings resembling a section of the wood. The beautiful

Australian parakeets, known as the Batcherrygar parrots, look so much

like the leaves of _Eucalpyti_, 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 _Cassidae_) closely resemble glittering drops of dew; some

kinds of spiders mimic flower-buds, "and station themselves motionless

in the axils of leaves and other parts of plants to wait for their

victims." Insects belonging to the genera 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 among

the butterflies of the valley of the Amazon recently made known to us

by Mr. Bates. There is a family of butterflies named _Heliconidae_, 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, color, and markings. So close is the resemblance that Mr.

Bates often found it impossible to distinguish members of one family

from those of the other when the insects were on the wing; and he

observed, moreover, that when a local variety of a species of the

_Heliconidae_ occurred, there was found also a butterfly of another

family imitating that local variety. There is no difficulty at all in

distinguishing the imitators from the imitated, for the latter have

all a family likeness, while the former depart from the normal form

and likeness of the families to which they respectively belong. What

is the meaning of this curious fact? It is this: the _Heliconidae_, or

imitated butterflies, are not persecuted by birds, dragon-flies,

lizards, or other insectivorous enemies, while the members of the

imitating families are subject to much persecution. The butterflies

imitated are said to owe their immunity from persecution to their

offensive odor, while no such fortunate character belongs to the

imitating insects. But how, we naturally ask, has this change of color

and form been effected? Mr. Darwin and Mr. Bates explain it on the

principle of natural selection. Let us suppose that a member of the

persecuted family gave birth to a variety--and there is a tendency in

all animals to produce varieties--exhibiting a very slight resemblance

to some species of _Heliconidae_. This individual, in consequence of

this slight resemblance, would have a better chance of living and

producing young than those of its relatives which bear no resemblance

whatever to the unmolested family. Some of the offspring of this

slightly favored variety would very probably show more marked

resemblance to the unpersecuted butterflies; and thus the likeness

between insects of totally distinct groups would in course of time be,

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.

{191}

Leaving, then, the new world, let us cast a glance, in company with

one of the greatest botanists of the day, at what we may call the

tropical features of the Sikkim Himalayas. Though this region is not

strictly speaking within the tropics, yet the vegetation at the base

is of a tropical character. In this wonderful district the naturalist

is able to wander through every zone of vegetation, from the "dense

deep-green dripping forests" at the base of the Himalaya, formed of

giant trees, as the _Duabanga_ and _Terminalia_, with _Cedrela_ and

_Gordonia Wallichii_, mingled with innumerable shrubs and herbs, to

the lichens and mosses of the regions of perpetual snow. The tropical

vegetation of the Sikkim extends from Siligoree, a station on the

verge of the Terai, "that low malarious belt which skirts the base of

the Himalaya from the Sutlej to Brahma-Koond, in Upper Assam."

"Every feature," writes Dr. Hooker, "botanical, geological, and

zoological, is new on entering this district. The change is sudden and

immediate: sea and shore are hardly more conspicuously different; nor

from the edge of the Terai to the limit of perpetual snow is any

botanical region more clearly marked than this which is the

commencement of Himalayan vegetation." The banks of the numerous

tortuous streams are richly clothed with vines and climbing

convolvuluses, with various kinds of _Cucurbitaceae_ and

_Bignoniaceae_. The district of the Terai is very pestilential, and,

though fatal to Europeans, is inhabited by a race called the Mechis

with impunity. As our traveller proceeded to the little bungalow of

Punkabaree, about 1,800 feet in elevation, the bushy timber of the

Terai was found to be replaced by giant forests, with large bamboos

cresting the hills, numerous epiphytical orchids and ferns, with

_Hoya, Seitamineae_, and similar types of the hottest and dampest

climates. All around Punkabaree the hills rise steeply 5,000 or 6,000

feet; from the road at and a little above the bungalow the view is

described by Dr. Hooker as superb and very instructive:

"Behind (or north) the Himalaya rise in steep confused masses.

Below, the hill on which I stood, and the ranges as far as the eye

can reach east and west, throw spurs on the plains of India. These

are very thickly wooded, and enclose broad, dead-flat, hot, or damp

valleys, apparently covered with a dense forest. Secondary spurs of

clay and gravel, like that immediately below Punkabaree, rest on the

bases of the mountains and seem to form an intermediate neutral

ground between flat and mountainous India. The Terai district forms

a very irregular belt, scantily clothed, and intersected by

innumerable rivulets from the hills, which unite and divide again on

the flat, till, emerging from the region of many trees, they enter

the plains, following devious courses, which glisten like silver

threads. The whole horizon is bounded by the sea-like expanse of the

plains, which stretch away into the region of sunshine and fine

weather, as one boundless flat. In the distance the courses of the

Teesta and Cosi, the great drainers of the snowy Himalayas, and the

recipients of innumerable smaller rills, are with difficulty traced

at this the dry season. The ocean-like appearance of this southern

view is even more conspicuous in the heavens than on the land, the

clouds arranging themselves after a singularly sea-scape fashion.

Endless strata run in parallel ribbons over the extreme horizon;

above these scattered cumuli, also in horizontal lines, are dotted

against a clear grey sky, which gradually, as the eye is lifted,

passes into a deep cloudless blue vault, continuously clear to the

zenith; there the cumuli, in white fleecy masses, again appear;

till, in the northern celestial hemisphere, they thicken and assume

the leaden hue of nimbi, discharging their moisture on the dark

forest-clad hills around. The breezes are south-easterly, bringing

that {192} vapor from the Indian ocean which is rarefied and

suspended aloft over the heated plains, but condensed into a drizzle

when it strikes the cooler flanks of the hills, and into heavy rain

when it meets their still colder summits. Upon what a gigantic scale

does nature here operate! Vapors raised from an ocean whose nearest

shore is more than 400 miles distant are safely transported without

the loss of one drop of water, to support the rank luxuriance of

this far distant region. This and other offices fulfilled, the waste

waters are returned by the Cosi and Teesta to the ocean, and again

exhaled, exported, expended, recollected, and returned."

Many travellers complain of the annoyance caused to them by leeches.

Legions of these pests abound in the water-courses and dense jungles

of the Sikkim, and though their bite is painless, it is followed by

considerable effusion of blood. "They puncture through thick worsted

stockings, and even trousers; and when full roll in the form of a

little soft ball into the bottom of the shoe, where their presence is

hardly felt in walking."

A thousand feet higher, above the bungalow of Punkabaree, the

vegetation is very rich, the prevalent timber being of enormous size,

"and scaled by climbing _Leguminosae_, as _Bauhinias_ and _Robinias_,

which sometimes sheathe the trunks or span the forest with huge

cables, joining tree to tree." Their trunks are also clothed with

orchids; and still more beautifully with pothos, peppers, vines, and

convolvuli.

"The beauty of the drapery of the pothos leaves (_Scindapsus_) is

pre-eminent, whether for the graceful folds the foliage assumes or for

the liveliness of its color. Of the more conspicuous smaller trees the

wild banana is the most abundant; its crown of very beautiful foliage

contrasting with the smaller-leaved plants amongst which it nestles;

next comes a screwpine (_Pandanus_) with a straight stem and a tuft of

leaves, each eight or ten feet long, waving on all sides.

_Araliaceae_, with smooth or armed slender trunks, and _Mappa_-like

_Euphorbiaceae_ spread their long petioles horizontally forth, each

terminated with an ample leaf some feet in diameter. Bamboo abounds

everywhere; its dense tufts of culms, 100 feet and upward high, are as

thick as a man's thigh at the base. Twenty or thirty species of ferns

(including a tree fern) were luxuriant and handsome. Foliaceous

lichens and a few mosses appeared at 2,000 feet. Such is the

vegetation of the roads through the tropical forests of Outer

Himalaya."

As we ascend about 2,000 feet higher, we find many plants of the

temperate zone mingling with the tropical vegetation, amongst which "a

very English-looking bramble," bearing a good yellow fruit, is the

first to mark the change; next, mighty oaks with large lamellated cups

and magnificent foliage succeed, till along the ridge of the mountain

to Kursiong, at an elevation of about 4,800 feet, the change in the

flora is complete. Here the vegetation recalls to mind home

impressions: "the oak flowering, the birch bursting into leaf, the

violet, _Chrysosplenium, Stellaria and Arum, Vaccinium_, wild

strawberry, maple, geranium, bramble. A colder wind blew here; mosses

and lichens carpeted the banks and roadsides; the birds and insects

were very different from those below, and everything proclaimed the

marked change in the vegetation." And yet even at this elevation we

meet with forms of tropical plants, "pothos, bananas, palms, figs,

pepper, numbers of epiphytal orchids, and similar genuine tropical

genera."

The hill-station of Darjiling, the well-known sanitarium, where the

health of Europeans is recruited by a temperate climate, is about 370

miles to the north of Calcutta. The ridge "varies in height from 6,500

to 7,500 feet above the level of the sea, 8,000 feet being the

elevation at which the mean temperature most nearly coincides with

that of London, viz., 50°." {193} The forests around Darjiling are

composed principally of magnolias, oaks, laurels, with birch, alder,

maple, holly. Dr. Hooker draws especial attention to the absence of

_Leguminosae_, "the most prominent botanical feature in the vegetation

of the region," which, he says, is too high for the tropical tribes of

the warmer elevation, too low for the Alpines, and probably too moist

for those of temperate regions; cool, equable, humid climates being

generally unfavorable to the above-named order. "The supremacy of this

temperate region consists in the infinite number of forest trees, in

the absence (in the usual proportion, at any rate) of such common

orders as _Compositae, Leguminosae, Cruciferae_ and _Ranunculaceae_,

and of grasses amongst Monocotyledons, and in the predominance of the

rarer and more local families, as those of rhododendron, camellia,

magnolia, ivy, cornel, honeysuckle, hydrangea, begonia, and epiphytic

orchids."

We regret that want of space prevents us dwelling longer on the scenes

of tropical Himalaya, so graphically described by Dr. Hooker. We will

conclude this imperfect sketch with our traveller's description of the

scenery along the banks of the great Rungeet, 6,000 feet below

Darjiling:

"Leaving the forest, the path led along the river bank and over the

great masses of rock which strewed its course. The beautiful

India-rubber fig was common. . . . On the forest skirts, _Hoya_,

parasitical _Orchidiae_, and ferns abounded; the Chaulmoogra, whose

fruit is used to intoxicate fish, was very common, as was an immense

mulberry-tree, that yields a milky juice and produces a long, green,

sweet fruit. Large fish, chiefly cyprinoid, were abundant in the

beautifully clear water of the river. But by far the most striking

feature consisted in the amazing quantity of superb butterflies,

large tropical swallow-tails, black, with scarlet or yellow eyes on

their wings. They were seen everywhere, sailing majestically through

the still, hot air, or fluttering from one scorching rock to

another, and especially loving to settle on the damp sand of the

river; where they sat by thousands, with erect wings, balancing

themselves with a rocking motion, as their heavy sails inclined them

to one side or the other, resembling a crowded fleet of yachts on a

calm day. Such an entomological display cannot be surpassed.

_Cicindelae_ and the great _Cicadeae_ were everywhere lighting on

the ground, when they uttered a short sharp creaking sound, and anon

disappeared as if by magic. Beautiful whip-snakes were gleaming in

the sun; they hold on by a few coils of the tall round a twig, the

greater part of their body stretched out horizontally, occasionally

retracting and darting an unerring aim at some insect. The

narrowness of the gorge, and the excessive steepness of the bounding

hills, prevented any view except of the opposite mountain-face,

which was one dense forest, in which the wild banana was

conspicuous."

One of the most remarkable botanical discoveries of modern days is

that of a very curious and anomalous genus of plants, named by Dr.

Hooker _Welwitschia_ in honor of its discoverer. Dr. Frederic

Welwitsch, who first noticed this singular plant in a letter to Sir

William Hooker, dated August, 1860. "I have been assured," says Dr.

Hooker in his valuable memoir of this plant, "by those who remember

it, that since the discovery of the _Rafflesia Arnoldii_, no vegetable

production has excited so great an interest as the subject of the

present memoir." We well remember this singular plant, having seen a

specimen in the Kew Herbarium soon after its arrival in this country.

The following is Dr. Hooker's account of its appearance and prominent

characters:

"The _Welwitschia_ is a woody plant, said to attain a century in

duration, with an obconic trunk about two feet long, of which a few

inches rise {194} above the soil, presenting the appearance of a

flat, two-lobed depressed mass, sometimes (according to Dr.

Welwitsch) attaining fourteen feet in circumference (!) and looking

like a round table. When full grown, it is dark brown, hard, and

cracked over the whole surface (much like the burnt crust of a loaf

of bread); the lower portion forms a stout tap-root, buried in the

soil and branching downward at the end. From deep grooves in the

circumference of the depressed mass two enormous leaves are given

off, each six feet long when full grown, one corresponding to each

lobe. These are quite flat, linear, very leathery, and split to the

base into innumerable thongs that lie curling upon the surface of

the soil. Its discoverer describes these same two leaves as being

present from the earliest condition of the plant, and assures me

that they are in fact developed from the two cotyledons of the seed,

and are persistent, being replaced by no others. From the

circumference of the tabular mass, above but close to the insertion

of the leaves, spring stout dichotomously branched cymes, nearly a

foot high, bearing small erect scarlet cones, which eventually

become oblong and attain the size of those of the common spruce fir.

The scales of the cones are very closely imbricated, and contain

when young and still very small solitary flowers, which in some

cases are hermaphrodite (structurally but not functionally), in

others female."

After describing these flowers in botanical terms. Dr. Hooker adds,

"The mature cone is tetragonous, and contains a broadly winged scale.

Its discoverer observes that the whole plant exudes a resin, and that

it is called 'tumbo' by the natives. It inhabits the elevated sandy

plateau near Cape Negro (lat 14° 40' S. to 23° S.) on the south-west

coast of Africa." Dr. Hooker regards the _Welwitschia_ as "the only

perennial flowering-plant which at no period has other vegetative

organs than those proper to the embryo itself,--the main axis being

represented by the radicle, which becomes a gigantic caulicle and

develops a root from its base, and inflorescences from its plumulary

end, and the leaves being the two cotyledons in a very highly

developed and specialized condition." [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: "Transactions of the Linnean Society," vol. xxiv.,

part i.]

Few countries present more objects of interest to the naturalist than

the island of Madagascar, amongst the botanical treasures of which

island the water yam or lace-leaf (_Ouviranidra fenestralis_) claims

especial notice. This beautiful and singular plant, which belongs to

the natural order _Naiadaceae_, was first made known to the scientific

world by du Petit Thouars in 1822. Horticulturists are indebted to Mr.

Ellis, the well-known author of "Polynesian Researches," for the

introduction of this singular plant into England, specimens of which

may be seen in the Royal Gardens at Kew and elsewhere:

"This plant," says Mr. Ellis, "is not only extremely curious, but

also very valuable to the natives, who, at certain seasons of the

year, gather it as an article of food--the fleshy root when cooked

yielding a farinaceous substance resembling the yam. Hence its

native name, _ouvirandrano_, literally, yam of the water;--_ouvi_ in

the Malagasy and Polynesian languages signifying yam, and _rano_ in

the former and some of the latter signifying water. The ouvirandra

is not only a rare and curious, but a singularly beautiful plant,

both in structure and color. From the several crowns of the

branching root, growing often a foot or more deep in the water, a

number of graceful leaves, nine or ten inches long and two or three

inches wide, spread out horizontally just beneath the surface of the

water. The flower-stalks rise from the centre of the leaves, and the

branching or forked flower is curious; but the structure of the leaf

is peculiarly so, and seems like a living fibrous skeleton rather

than an entire leaf. The {195} longitudinal fibres extend in curved

lined along its entire length, and are united by thread-like fibres

or veins, crossing them at right angles from side to side, at a

short distance from each other. The whole leaf looks as if composed

of fine tendrils, wrought after a most regular pattern, so as to

resemble a piece of bright-green lace or open needlework. Each leaf

rises from the crown on the root like a short delicate-looking pale

green or yellow fibre; gradually unfolding its feathery-looking

sides and increasing its size as it spreads beneath the water. The

leaves in their several stages of growth pass through almost every

gradation of color, from a pale yellow to a dark olive-green,

becoming brown or even black before they finally decay; air-bubbles

of considerable size frequently appearing under the full-formed and

healthy leaves. It is scarcely possible to imagine any object of the

kind more attractive and beautiful than a full-grown specimen of

this plant, with its dark green leaves forming the limit of a circle

two or three feet in diameter, and in the transparent water within

that circle presenting leaves in every stage of development, both as

to color and size. Nor is it the least curious to notice that these

slender and fragile structures, apparently not more substantial than

the gossamer and flexible as a feather, still possess a tenacity and

wiriness which allow the delicate leaf to be raised by the hand to

the surface of the water without injury."

No natural order of plants has created or continues to create a

greater degree of interest amongst travellers and botanists than the

_Orchidaceae_, of which more than three thousand species have been

described; the anomalous structure of their reproductory parts, the

singularity in form of the floral envelopes, the grotesque resemblance

which many kinds bear to some object or other of the animal world, the

rarity, beauty, and delicious fragrance of some forms--all combine to

render these plants of great value and interest. As inhabitants of hot

and damp localities, orchids are in general epiphytes, as in the

Brazilian forests, in the lower portions of the Himalayan mountains,

and in the islands of the Indian archipelago; when they occur in

temperate regions they are terrestrial in their mode of growth; in

extremely dry or cold climates, orchidaceous plants are unknown. Two

rare and beautiful epiphytal orchids, the _Angraecum sesquipedale_ and

_A. superbum_, were obtained by Mr. Ellis in Madagascar and Mauritius,

and introduced into this country. Of the former, the largest flowered

of all the orchids, Dr. Lindley has given the following description:

"The plant forms a stem about eighteen inches high, covered with

long leathery leaves in two ranks, like _Venda tricolor_ and its

allies; but they have a much more beautiful appearance, owing to a

drooping habit, and a delicate bloom which clothes their surface.

From the axils of the uppermost of these leaves appear short stiff

flower-stalks, each bearing three and sometimes five flowers,

extending seven inches in breadth and the same in height. They are

furnished with a firm, curved, tapering, tail-like spur, about

fourteen inches long. When first open, the flower is slightly tinged

with green except the tip, which is almost pure white; after a short

time the green disappears, and the whole surface acquires the

softest waxy texture and perfect whiteness. In this condition they

remain, preserving all their delicate beauty, for more than five

weeks. Even before they expand, the greenish buds, which are three

inches long, have a very noble appearance."

To the scientific naturalist few subjects are more full of deep

interest than the question of the geographical distribution of

animals. Dr. Sclater, the active secretary of the Zoological Society

of London, has contributed an instructive paper, "On the Mammals of

Madagascar," to the second, number {196} of the "Quarterly Journal of

Science," from which we gather the following facts: As a general rule,

it is found that the faunae and florae of such countries as are most

nearly contiguous do most nearly resemble one another, while, on the

other hand, those tracts of land which are furthest asunder are

inhabited by most different forms of animal and vegetable life. Now,

Madagascar, with the Mascarene islands, is a strange exception to the

rule; for the forms of mammalia which are found in these islands are

very different from the forms which occur in the contiguous coast of

Africa, although the channel between Madagascar and the continent is

in one place not more than 200 miles: "The numerous mammals of the

orders Ruminantia, Pachydermata, and Proboscidea, so characteristic of

the Ethiopian fauna, are entirely absent from Madagascar. The same is

the case with the larger species of carnivora which are found

throughout the African continent, but do not extend into Madagascar.

Again, the highly organized types of Quadrumana which prevail in the

forests of the mainland are utterly wanting in the neighboring island;

their place being there occupied by several genera of the inferior

family of _Lemurs_," Dr. Sclater shows that this anomaly is not

confined to the orders already enumerated, but that similar

irregularities prevail to a greater or lesser extent in every part of

the mammalian series, and that, in short, the anomalies presented to

us of the forms of life prevalent in the island of Madagascar "are so

striking that claims have been put forward in its favor to be

considered as a distinct primary geographical region of the earth."

Dr. Sclater also draws attention to the very curious fact, "quite

unparalleled, as far as is hitherto known, in any other fauna, that

nearly two-thirds of the whole number of known species of the mammals

of this island are members of one peculiar group of Quadrumana." The

family of _Lemuridae_ contains no less than eight generic types, all

different from those found in Africa and India, although this group is

also represented in Africa by the abnormal form _Perodicticus_, and in

India by _Nycticebus_ and _Loris_, two allied genera. The celebrated

Aye Aye (_Chiromys Madagascariensis_), a specimen of which anomalous

animal is at present in the new monkey-house in the Zoological

Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, is considered by Prof. Owen to be

more nearly allied to some of the African Galagos than to any other

form of animal. Of insectivora, the genera _Centetes, Ericulus_, and

_Echinogale_, small animals resembling hedge-hogs in outward

appearance, are thought to be most nearly allied to an American genus.

From the anomalies in the mammalian fauna of this island. Dr. Sclater

arrives at the following deductions, which, however, as they are based

upon the hypothesis of the derivative origin of species, cannot at

present be deemed altogether conclusive:

"1. Madagascar has never been connected with Africa, _as it at

present exists_. This would seem probable from the absence of

certain all-pervading Ethiopian types in Madagascar, such as

_Antelope, Hippopotamus Felis_, etc. But, on the other hand, the

presence of _Lemurs_ in Africa renders it certain that Africa as it

at present exists, contains land that once formed part of

Madagascar.

"2. Madagascar and the Mascarene islands (which are universally

acknowledged to belong to the same category) must have remained for

a long epoch separated from every other part of the globe, in order

to have acquired the many peculiarities now exhibited in their

mammal fauna--_e.g._, _Lemur, Chiromys, Eupleres, Centetes,_

etc.--to be elaborated by the gradual modification of pre-existing

forms.

"3. Some land-connection must have existed in former ages between

Madagascar and India, whereon the original stock, whence the present

Lemuridae of Africa, Madagascar, and India, are descended,

flourished.

{197}

"4. It must be likewise allowed that some sort of connection must

also have existed between Madagascar and land which now forms part

of the new world--in order to permit the derivation of the

_Centetinae_ from a common stock with the _Solenodon_, and to

account for the fact that the Lemuridae, as a body, are certainly

more nearly allied to the weaker forms of American monkeys than to

any of the Simiidae of the old world.

"The anomalies of the mammal fauna of Madagascar can best be

explained by supposing that, anterior to the existence of Africa in

its present shape, a large continent occupied parts of the Atlantic

and Indian oceans, stretching out toward (what is now) America on

the west, and to India and its islands on the east; that this

continent was broken up into islands, of which some became

amalgamated with the present continent of Africa, and some possibly

with what is now Asia--and that in Madagascar and the Mascarene

islands we have existing relics of this great continent."

We fain would have lingered on the natural products of this

interesting island, to drink of the refreshing liquid furnished by the

traveller-tree, and to admire the sago palms and other vegetable

forms, but space forbids our dwelling longer on the natural

productions of the tropics. [Footnote 30] We could have spoken of the

aspects of tropical nature as it appears in Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and

other islands of the Pacific ocean, but we must stop. We ought not,

however, to conclude these gleanings without a brief notice of Dr.

Hartwig's popular book, whose title we have placed at the head of this

article. There are those who look with contempt on popular science of

all kinds, and regard with undisguised aversion such compilations as

the one before us. We do not share these feelings in the least degree;

on the contrary, we welcome most heartily such introductions to the

study of natural history. True, they may be sometimes of little

scientific value, but they are very useful stepping-stones to

something more solid. They are more especially intended for the young,

but those of mature years may derive much profit by a perusal of many

of these works, and even the naturalist may read them with pleasure

and instruction. The numerous beautifully illustrated and carefully

compiled works on natural history, such as the book before us,

together with "The Sea and its Living Wonders," by the same writer,

with Routledge's admirable "Natural History," and several of the

Christian Knowledge Society's publications, which have appeared within

the last few years, are an encouraging sign of the growing interest

which the rising generation takes in the study of the great Creator's

works, and we heartily wish them "God-speed."

[Footnote 30: In our own territory of the Seychelles Islands, 4° to

5° S., 300 miles N. E. of the great island Just alluded to, we see

one of the strangest of vegetable productions, the double cocoa-nut,

or Lodoicea, which was fully described by Mr. Ward in the "Journal

of the Linnean Society, 1864:" "The shortest period before the tree

puts forth its buds is 30 years, and 100 years must elapse before it

attains its full growth. One plant in the garden at Government

House, planted 15 years ago, is quite in its infancy, about 16 feet

in height, but with no stem yet visible, the long leaves shooting

from, the earth like the Traveler's Palm (_Urania specioea_), and

much resembling it in shape, but much larger. Unlike the cocoa-nut

trees, which bend to every gale and are never quite straight, the

coco-de-mer trees are as upright as iron pillars. At the ago of 30

the trees first put forth blossoms. The female tree alone produces

the nut, and is 6 feet shorter than the male, which attains a height

of 100 feet. From fructification to full maturity a period of nearly

10 years elapses." But the remarkable point is the arrangement of

the roots, unlike any other tree. "The base of the trunk is of a

bulbous form, and this bulb fits into a natural bowl or socket about

2-1/2 feet in diameter and 1-1/2 foot in depth, narrowing to the

bottom. This bowl is pierced with hundreds of small oval holes about

the size of thimbles, with hollow tubes corresponding on the

outside, through which the roots penetrate the ground on all sides,

never, however, becoming attached to the bowl, their partial

elasticity affording an almost imperceptible, but very necessary

_play_ to the parent stem when struggling against the force of

violent gales. This bowl is of the same substance as the shell of

the nut, only much thicker. As far as can be ascertained, it never

rots or wears out. It has been found quite perfect and entire in

every respect 60 years after the tree has been cut down. At Curiense

many sockets are still remaining which are known to have belonged to

trees cut down by the first settlers in the Island (1742)." One of

these sockets is to be seen in the Museum of woods at Kew.]

--------

{198}

From Chamber's Journal.

WINTER SIGNS.

Links upon the forehead come--

Strokes alike of time and grief,

Branches from the heart beneath

That will never bear a leaf.

Come the summer, come the spring,

Still they keep their wintry hue;

Deepening, stretching o'er the brow.

Shadows lift them into view.

Straight and crooked, right and left.

On the strong and on the weak--

Upward to the hoary head.

Downward to the hollow cheek.

Shadows from the life within,

Tarrying ere they pass away,

Plant these stems of sorrow there,

Growing in the night and day.

Light that fills the eye afresh

From some inward moving grace,

Casting from it, as a sun.

Quiet rays upon the face--

Makes these ruts of time appear

Winding, widening in their space,

Drawing loving eyes and thoughts

All their history to trace.

Whilst upheaved by a smile,

Radiant in the breast of light,

These eternal scores of grief

Tell of many an inner night.

Stories come up from their roots.

Half unfolded in their course,

Showing how a hundred pangs

Long ago became their source.

--------

{199}

From The Lamp.

ALL-HALLOW EVE; OR, THE TEST OF FUTURITY.

BY ROBERT CURTIS.

CHAPTER XV.

Any help which old Murdock was in the habit of getting from his son

upon the farm, and it was at no time of much value, either in labor or

advice, had latterly dwindled down to a mere careless questioning as

to how matters were going on, and his father began to fear that he was

"beginning to go to the bad." Poor old man, how little of the truth he

knew!

There was now always something cranky and unpleasant in Tom's manner.

He was often from home for days together, and, when at home, often out

at night until very late; and if questioned in the kindest manner by

his father upon the subject, his answers were snappish and

unsatisfactory. Poor old Mick--deluded Mick--laid down both his

wanderings and his crankiness to the score of his love for Winny

Cavana, and the uncertainty of his suit.

From one or two encouraging and cheery expressions his father had

addressed to him, Tom knew this to be the view his father had taken of

his case, and he was quite willing to indulge the delusion. Now that

matters had come to an open rupture between him and Winny--for

notwithstanding his father's hopes, he had none--it was convenient for

him that his father should continue of the same mind--nay, more, his

father himself had suggested a step, which, if he could manage with

his usual ability, might turn to his profit, and relieve to a certain

extent some of the perplexities by which he was beset.

Old Mick had spent a long and fatiguing day, not merely in his

peregrinations through the farm, but from anxiety and watching, having

observed Winny go out earlier than usual, and seeing that Tom soon

after had followed her down the road. He was rather surprised in about

an hour afterward to see Winny return alone, and at not having seen

Tom for nearly two hours later in the day, when he returned cross and

disappointed, as we have seen. The "untoward circumstances," detailed

in the conversation after dinner with his son, had not the same

depressing effects upon the old man as upon Tom; for he really

believed that they were not only not past cure, but according to his

notions of how such matters generally went on, that they were on a

fair road to success. He therefore enjoyed a night's sound sleep,

while Tom lay tossing and tumbling, and planning and scheming,--and

occasionally cursing Edward Lennon, whom he could not persuade himself

was not, as his father said, at the bottom of all this. It was near

morning, therefore, before he had fretted himself to sleep.

Early the next day old Mick determined to ascertain the actual state

of facts. He was up betimes, and having seen what was necessary to be

done for the day upon the farm, he set the operations going, and

returned to breakfast. Tom had not yet stirred; and as Nancy had told

the old masther that she "heered him struggling with the bed-clothes,

an' talkin' to himself until nearly morning," he would not allow her

to call him, but went to breakfast by himself, telling her to have a

fresh pot of tay, an' a dacent breakfast for him when he got up. "Poor

fellow," he said to himself, "I did not think that girl had so firm a

hoult of him."

{200}

Old Mick's anticipations of how matters really stood, and his

confidence in Ned Cavana's firmness, were doomed to be shaken, if not

altogether disappointed. Old Ned saw him hanging "about the borders"

with a watchful look directed toward his house. He took it for granted

that Tom had mentioned something of what had occurred to him, and he

knew at once what he was lingering about for.

Ned had undoubtedly led old Murdock to suppose that he would be "as

stout as a bull" with Winny about marrying his son; but when Ned had

spoken thus sternly upon the subject, he had not anticipated any

opposition upon Winny's part to the match. He did not see how she

could object, nor did he see why. Mick had imbibed some slight idea of

the kind from what Tom had told him; but Ned had combated this idea

with great decision, and some sternness; more by way of showing his

neighbor how he could exercise his parental authority, than from any

great dread that he would ever be called on to assert it.

But Ned Cavana knew not the nature Class his own heart. He had

miscalculated the extent of his love for Winny, or the influence her

affectionate and devoted life could exercise over that love, in a case

where such a dispute might come between them. Thus we have seen him

yield to that influence almost without argument, and certainly without

a harsh or angry word. When it came to the point that he had to

confront her tears, where was the fury with which he met old Murdock's

insinuations and suggestions?--where the threats of cutting her off,

not _with_ but _without_ a shilling, and leaving it all to the

Church?--where the steady determination with which he had resolved to

"bring her to her senses?"--all, all lost in the affectionate smile

which beamed upon her pleading love.

Ned Cavana knew now that old Murdock was on the watch for him. He

believed that Tom had told him what had taken place between him and

Winny; and although he did not dread any alteration in his promise to

his daughter, he felt that he could deal more stoutly with old Murdock

with the recollection of Winny's tears fresh on her cheeks, than if

the matter were to lie over for any time. He therefore strolled

through the farmyard, and out on the lane we have already spoken of,

and turned down toward the fields at the back of his garden. This

movement was not, of course, unnoticed by the man who was on the watch

for some such, and accordingly he sloped down toward the gate, at

which he and his son had held the conversation--a conversation which

had confirmed Winny in her preconceived opinion of Tom Murdock's

character and motives.

The two old men thus met once again at the same spot at which the

reader first saw them together.

"I'm glad you cum out, Ned," said Murdock, "for I was watin to see

you, to tell you about Tom. He done his part yesterda' illegant, an'

you may spake to the little girl now as soon as you plaise."

"I have spoken to her, Mick. She tould me all about it herself, last

night."

"Well, she didn't resave Tom at all the way he thought she would, nor

the way she led him to think she would, aidher. I hope she tould the

thruth to you, Ned, and didn't make b'lief to be shy an' resarved, as

she did to Tom. Poor boy, he's greatly down about it."

"She did; she tould me the whole thruth, Mick avic, and it's all no

use; she won't marry Tom--that's the long an' the short of it."

"Why, then, she mightn't be cosherin wid him the way she was, Ned, and

ladin the poor young boy asthray as to her intintions when she brought

him to the point."

"My little girl never done anything of the kind, Mick; she'd scorn to

do it."

"Well, no matther; she done it now, Ned; and as for Tom, he's the

{201} very boy that i'd nather humbug a little girl, nor allow her to

humbug him. Did you spake stout to her, Ned?"

"I said all that was necessary, Mick awochal: but I seen it was no

use, an' I wouldn't disthress the crathur."

"Disthress the crathur, _aniow!_ Athen may be it's what you don't much

care how that poor boy 'ithin there is disthressed through her mains."