by convolvulus (Ipomoea) and other creepers that it is impossible to discern their kind. From among these shrubs rise a few single trumpet-wood trees (Cecropia peltata), the straight or but slightly branched stems of which, each crowned with a rosette of large maple-shaped leaves, spring up to a great height in a few months, and then, by their equally rapid decay, help largely in the formation of soil for more permanent trees. Accordingly, yet further back, but still on the spit, a few Long-Johns (Triplaris surinamensis) rise singly; for these, less enduring than the true forest trees, but more so than the trumpetwoods, grow on the soil deposited by the latter, and in their turn prepare the soil for more noble products. Lastly, where the original bank begins, the dense forest wall serves as a background to all this ephemeral vegetation.

One other very characteristic river-side picture must be given. In this, as far as the eye can see, the whole sandy bank is occupied by a dense thicket of souari palms (Astrocaryum [vulgare?],) their long grey stems slightly curved in various directions clear of hanging leaves, but horridly armed with long spines arranged in broad bands round the tree, their feathered greyish-green leaves also spiny, and the ground round their roots made impassable to naked feet by an unbroken carpet of heaped spines and spiny leafage.

Passing from the forest tract to the savannah the characteristic scenery may easily be shown in a few pictures. The first is taken from the great savannah of the interior. The scene is bounded towards the right by a distant chain of mountains, on the face of which bare cliffs and wooded slopes mingle; toward the left the plain rolls away until it meets the horizon. The land is not unlike those wider parts of the English downs where the rolling surface is broken by a few stunted hawthorns or clumps of tall furze. But in the hollows between the ridges of the savannah, instead of the fir, beech, and hazel coppices of the English downs, there are long, regular-looking groves of æta palms or belts of other tropical trees. The æta forest is like that which has

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already been described. many of them bear bright flowers. Commonest of all among the shrubs are hard-leaved, yellow-flowered species of Curatella. Here and there the highest ground is so thickly covered by these shrubs that it looks almost well wooded. In parts the soil is somewhat exposed and stony; but even here there are numbers of a curious low-growing plant (Scirpus paradoxus), with a thick swollen trunk, like that of a tree fern, surmounted by a dense rosette of very fine grass-like leaves. In other places there is high and luxuriant grass, among which mix many bright flowers, chiefly white, red, blue, and yellow pea-flowers, and even a few ground orchids. One great stretch of ground is entirely covered with a cabbage-like plant, with great bunches of yellow flowers (Byrsonima). A second savannah picture shows more sandy ground, a coppice not far off forming a background. On the loose sand there are many scattered tufts of coarse grass, and amongst these stand a few tall straggling plants (Jatropha urens) with inconspicuous flowers and hemp-like leaves, which, when touched, sting more sharply than any nettle.

The shrubs are windblown, but

Of the scenery of the somewhat different and peculiar sandstone part of the savannah, lying between the Kaieteur fall and Roraima, I have told elsewhere.

Before leaving the subject it must be mentioned that there are certain water plants which are so striking and in places so abundant that in themselves they make scenes. Two of these (Mouriera fluviatilis and Lacis alata) grow on the half-submerged rocks in most of the falls. As the water decreases in the dry season, the tall spikes of bright pink flowers of the former plant rise from their large leaves, the edges of which are cut and curled into the likeness of moss, which lie flat on the rocks; and at the same time and place innumerable tiny pink stars rise an inch or two over the equally moss-like leaves of the Lacis. A rapid, apparently encircled by the forest, and with its rocks all reddened by these flowers, is very beautiful and noticeable.

CHAPTER V.

ANIMAL LIFE.

General Considerations-Mammals-Warracaba Tigers-The Colours of Birds-Bird-notes-Chief Forms of Birds-Scenes of Bird-Life-Reptiles-Alligators-Iguanas-Snakes-Turtles-Fish-The Dangers of Bathing Insect Plagues- Butterflies -Beetles-Ants-Wasps-Mosquitoes-Sandflies - The Mosquito Worm-Jiggers - Bush-Ticks Spiders-Centipedes-Scorpions.

IN a tropical country so varied as regards physical features as British Guiana, and so sparingly inhabited by man, it will naturally be supposed that animal life, both in its beautiful and its baneful forms, is very abundant. This is indeed the case; but yet animal life is not in any marked degree prominent, nor, with the exception perhaps of insect. ravages, is it in any way troublesome. It is not surprising that the ordinary colonist, who generally lives in the more inhabited parts of the coast land, should not see much wild animal life around him; but the traveller in the interior, even if he is in search of wild beasts, cannot avoid a feeling of surprise that so few of these present themselves unsought to his notice, and that he has to search so diligently before he finds others. The untravelled man, living in temperate climates, while he overcolours in his mind the picture of the brilliant birds, insects, and animals, thinks with horror, not only of the powerful savage animalswhich are probably represented in his mind by beasts of prey and by gigantic or venomous serpents-but also of the thousand annoying insects and other such small cattle, which, as he imagines, everywhere lie in wait for the traveller, or even the dweller, in the tropics. If these imaginations were

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anywhere near the truth, it would indeed be a surprising thing that any man could long survive in the tropics. And if the man whom we have thus supposed to send his thoughts from temperate to tropical regions is at last drawn by a fate which appears to him unkind to travel for a short time to these places detestable to him, he reaches home with a consciousness that he has seen too little of the expected beauty, and felt little of the expected evils; and then, by a not unnatural reaction of thought, he is apt to regard all that he afterwards hears of the abundance, the beauty, or the annoyance of animal life in the tropics as merely the proverbial traveller's tale. And, unconsciously, travellers of greater experience help to confirm this erroneous view; for when they tell their experiences to those at home, they tell only of moments made eventful to them by exciting or evil experiences, and leave unnoticed the long periods intermediate between such moments, in which nothing of any consequence occurred. For example, not long ago, I found at the end of an evening during which I had told adventures which had occurred to me, in the course of several years, with many sorts of harmdoing animals, from jaguars to mosquitoes, that the impression made on the minds of my hearers was that life in Guiana, at any rate in the interior, is one long unending conflict with such foes; and I had to correct this impression by pointing out that the story told that evening was, as one of my hearers expressed it, the concentrated misery of three years. In the same way it is dangerous to tell of the many beautiful and interesting animal forms, unless stress is laid on the fact that these are but picked out from a large number of less interesting forms. Thus the traveller's true tale of his experiences, unless carefully guarded as I found necessary on the occasion just mentioned, helps to spread wrong impressions, both by helping to confirm those who are no travellers in their belief of the everywhere present beauty, and the incessant danger from animal life, in the tropics, and by leading those who have travelled a little, generally in the more inhabited parts, to regard these new

traveller's tales, and in consequence all other traveller's tales, as false, or at least as greatly exaggerated.

Therefore, in telling of animal, as I have already of vegetable, life in Guiana, I want not only to show its real abundance and beauty, but also and equally to show its slight prominence and general harmlessness. And as in this respect Guiana may fairly enough be said to be typical, not only of other parts of South America, but also (due allowance being made for the fact that the animal forms of the American continent are as a rule smaller and less powerful than those of the other continents) of other tropical regions, I should, if I could succeed in giving a correct impression of animal life as it affects man in Guiana, at the same time afford some idea of animal life in the tropics generally.

The number of mammals is somewhat large. It will be best to take them in the order of their abundance.

The most prominent animals in Guiana are three rodents -the labba (Calogenys paca), the acouri (Dasyprocta aguti) and the water-haas (Hydrochoerus capybara).

The labba, an animal like a large guinea-pig, with brown skin spotted with white, is distributed throughout the country on the banks of rivers. Its flesh is more esteemed than that of any other animal, not only by Indians, but also by the colonists; indeed the latter have a proverb that 'the man who has eaten labba and drunk creek water will never die out of the colony.' The labba lives during the day chiefly in hollow, fallen trees, and goes out to forage at night. The acourie, elsewhere called the aguti, is in appearance like a rabbit on long legs, and with coarse, chestnutcoloured hair. It is as abundant everywhere as the labba, but lives more in the forest, only venturing to the water to drink. It feeds by day on fallen fruits. There is a second species very similar, but smaller, called adourie (D. acuchy) only less common than the acourie. The water-haas, or capybara, is a much larger animal, which, like the labba, resembles a guinea-pig in shape, but is much larger