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trable thickets, entwined with thorny shrubs and woody lianes-now opening into a sheltered pool, bosoming upon its waters the gorgeous Victoria water-lily;—and we feel as if we could almost hear the strange, wild, and mournful sounds produced by the inhabitants of this enchanted region. These are well described by the author :

"Complete silence occurs only during very short intervals, for there is always some cause or other that prompts some animal to break the stillness. Sometimes the din grows so loud, that one might fancy a legion of evil spirits were celebrating their orgies in the darkness of the forest. The howling of the aluates, the whine of the little sapajous, the snarl of the douroucouli, the roaring of the jaguar, the grunt of the pecari, the cry of the sloth, and the shrill voices of birds, join in dreadful discord. Humboldt supposes the first cause of these tumults to be a conflict among animals, which, arising by chance, gradually swells to larger dimensions. The jaguar pursues a herd of pecaris or tapirs, which wildly break through the bushes; terrified by the noise, the monkeys howl, awakening parrots and toucans from their slumber, and thus the din spreads through the wood. A long time passes before the forest returns to its stillness. Towards the approach of day, the owls, the goatsuckers, the toads, the frogs, howl, groan, and croak for the last time; and as soon as the first beams of morning purple the sky, the shrill notes of the cicada mix with their expiring cries." ~ (P. 84.)

We never tire of such scenes, and the mind feels an ardent desire to know more of these wonders. To few does the good fortune fall, of an opportunity of exploring for themselves such regions of marvels-to the many they are for ever the unapproachable fairy-land, which they were to our young imaginations. We therefore hail, with pleasure, the appearance of the goodly volume before us, which is devoted to the description of tropical nature, and affords a succinct, exhaustive, and accurate account of its leading animal, vegetable, and physical features.

Dr. Hartwig is already favourably known as the author of a work entitled "The Sea and its living Wonders," to which the present is in all respects a companion volume, of the same form and size, and with the same class and copiousness of illustration. Although these are often objectionably small, many of them are excellent, characteristic, and original, and greatly enhance the value of a work intended to convey useful information in a popular, but at the same time, scientific and accurate form. There are also eight principal illustrations, consisting of "chromo-xylographs" (which, being interpreted, signifies tinted wood-cuts), representing as many well-selected tropical scenes of striking interest. The plan of the work is threefold, the first giving an account of the general aspects (chiefly physical) of tropical nature; the second being descriptive of the wonders of tropical vegetation; and the remainder, or more than one-half the volume, is devoted to the varied and teeming insect and other animal life. The aspects of tropical nature exhibit themselves under various forms, such as the thirsty Llanos, calcined grass-plains, presenting the monotonous aspect of interminable wastes, whose limits melt in the hazy distance with those of the horizon, and which in the dry, parched season sometimes catch fire, and are soon converted into a black and charred region of miles and miles in extent. But let the tropical rain fall upon this arid and

thirsty land, and vegetation springs up with almost miraculous rapidity, and "the dull tawny surface of the parched Savannah changes as if by magic into a carpet of the most lively green, enamelled with thousands of flowers of every colour." The Puna, or uninhabited region of high tablelands in Peru and Bolivia, though situated near the Llanos, in the torrid zone, yet being elevated from 10,000 to 14,000 feet above the sea, contrast with them in their bleak and unfriendly climate, constantly liable to wintry storms and sudden changes of temperature, as much as 45° in a few hours. In such unfriendly regions a few stunted shrubs and dense grass form the characteristic vegetation; and from these the useful llama and alpaca derive subsistence, the wool which protects them from the inclemency of the situation being one of their chief attractions. In Africa, the Kalahari and the Sahara-though both deserts are not both equally inhospitable; for while Sahara, extending from the 39th to the 70th degree of N. latitude, is a dreary waste, redeemed only by bright green oases, which break its monotony, like the charming islands which stud the vast solitudes of the Pacific, the Kalahari is far from being destitute of animal and vegetable life. It contains but little water, but in no other respect can it be called desert, being covered with grass and creeping plants, while the Caffre water-melon covers the ground in some seasons with juicy gourds. Koodoos, gemsbocks, elands, and other antelopes may often be seen here forty miles from the nearest water; and other game, such as rhinoceri, buffalos, gnus, and giraffes are not unfrequent in its immediate neighbourhood. To each of these characteristic regions, as well as to the Peruvian sand-coast, the Mexican plateaux, the mighty Amazons, in the West, and the Sikkim slopes and mangrove swamps in the East, is an interesting chapter devoted in the work before us.

The characteristic forms of tropical vegetation consist of trees often of gigantic size, such as the baobab, or Adansonia, more than a hundred feet in circumference, though only about sixty feet high; great dragon trees (Dracaenas), sycamores, and the widely-renowned banyan (Ficus indica), each tree a little grove, sending out in the case of a celebrated one on the banks of the Nerbuddah 3,000 root-trunks, still covering a space of ground 2,000 feet in circumference, and once known to have afforded shelter to 7,000 men. Often to beauty of foliage and majesty of form there is superadded a delicious aroma, as in the sandal-tree of the Malabar coast; or the attention is arrested by a strange grotesqueness of form, as in the giant cacti of the New World, some remarkable specimens of which are figured in Plate 4, rising in angular columns to the height of 60 feet, generally branchless, sometimes strangely ramified as candelabras, while others creep like ropes upon the ground, or hang snake-like from the trees. In similar situations to the last are "endless varieties of epiphytal plants of inconceivable size and luxuriance, such as ferns, bromelias, tillandsias, orchids, and pothos, covering the trunks and branches of the forest trees with hanging gardens far more splendid than those of ancient Babylon." But the palms must not be forgotten-the trees of all others the benefactors of man-whose three hundred and sixty uses have been sung by the Eastern poets. "Some years ago a ship from the Maldive Islands touched at Galle, which was entirely built, rigged, provisioned, and laden with the produce

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of the cocoa-tree." Graceful in form, and fertile in valuable and useful products, many species may yet be considered to possess virtues which, at present undeveloped, may be destined to hold important rank in the future commercial annals of the world.

To the exuberant fertility of this zone we are also indebted for abundant vegetable nutritive products,-rice, maize, arrowroot, sugar, coffee, cocoa, &c.; important spices, as nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and ginger; dyes, as indigo and dyewoods; manufactures, as cotton, caoutchouc, and gutta percha-all indispensable adjuncts to civilization, all demanding the heat and the light which the tropics alone can afford, and all finding a place in the volume before us.

But the tropics, rich and fertile as they are, attractive enough to cause a mutiny of the "Bounty," are not without their drawbacks, and the worst of these are, perhaps, to be found in the insect world. Mosquitoes in clouds, protected by their numbers and their minuteness, "murder sleep." Chegoes, or jiggers, insinuate their nests into the feet and toes, and, if allowed to remain, cause their victims to be "lamed for life, and become loathsome to the sight;" blood-sucking ticks and bete-rouges produce painful sores on the undefended parts of man; while the tzsetse-fly, or zimb, is the scourge of cattle, so terrible and so fatal, that "had any one of our indigenous flies similar poisonous qualities, we should never have been able to escape from barbarism." Locusts and cockroaches are ever ready to devour everything, and are, in their way, no less important plagues. Against these we may place the silkworm and cochineal insects as absolutely invaluable, and a host of others are at once harmless to man and marvellous in their form, size, or habits. Gigantic beetles, the elephant, typhon, hector, and goliath, fighting mantises, leaf and walkingstick insects-those singular freaks of Nature, bright lantern-flies, and luminous beetles are among these. Ants and termites as wonderful as our own bees, if not more so, from their wondrous societies, unwearied industry, and astonishing intelligence, are inexhaustible sources of interest; and though some are formidably armed and dangerous neighbours, they are not without their uses. The ranger-ants of West Indies sting cruelly, but their appearance is the death-warrant for every spider, scorpion, cockroach, or reptile that pollutes the dwelling.

The dangers arising from the bite of venomous serpents appear not to be so great as is generally imagined. Sir E. Tennent frequently performed journeys of two to five hundred miles through the jungle in Ceylon without seeing a single snake. They are easily alarmed, and hastily retreat, and only when suddenly surprised do they wound, and then in self-defence. Add to this, that but a small minority of snakes are poisonous, twenty-one out of ninety-one in tropical America, seven out of forty-three in India, and four out of twenty in Ceylon, and it is evident that the terrors of the serpent kind are usually somewhat exaggerated. Still the cobra, the bushmaster, and the rattlesnake are sufficient to strike terror into the boldest heart, and for these the whole race must be proscribed.

We must pass over the wonders of tropical bird-life, the painted toucans, the gemmed humming-birds, the military-looking flamingoes, the grotesque hornbills, the golden honey-eaters, the great soaring condors, and the

greater running ostriches, the noisy parrots and macaws, and the delicateplumaged cockatoos, and devote the remainder of this notice to one or two of the characteristic mammalia of tropical regions. Here we have adventures by flood and field, in the chase of the ungainly hippopotamus, the savage rhinoceros, and the massive elephant. In the hippopotamus we should hardly expect to recognise much intelligence, or to credit much of the god-like attribute of memory; but he seems to have both where they may serve his purpose, or help to self-preservation. "It knows how to avoid pitfalls, and has so good a memory that when it has once heard a ball whiz about its ears, it never after ceases to be cautious and wide awake at the approach of danger." (P. 435.) Like elephants, certain solitary individuals appear to have a special bump of mischief, and are called rogues for their cunning and instinct for its gratification.

The account of the lion is specially interesting in connection with the paper by M. Jules Gérard, in the present number of this Review. "Man," says Dr. Hartwig, "judging from outward appearances and attributing to external beauty analogous qualities of mind, has endowed the lion with a nobility of character which he really does not possess; for modern travellers who have had occasion to observe him in his native wilds, far from awarding him the praise of chivalrous generosity and noble daring, rather describe him as a mean-spirited robber, prowling about at night time, in order to surprise a weaker prey." We will conclude our notice of this most interesting and instructive volume with a passage which places the moral character of the lion--if we may so describe it-in a somewhat novel light.

"When, so say the Bedouins, a single man meeting with a lion is possessed of an undaunted heart, he advances towards the monster brandishing his sword, or flourishing his rifle high in the air, and taking good care not to strike or shoot, contents himself with pouring forth a torrent of abuse :-'Oh thou mean-spirited thief! thou pitiful waylayer! thou son of one that never ventured to say no! think'st thou I fear thee? Know'st thou whose son I am? Arise, and let me pass!' The lion waits till the man approaches quite near to him; then he retires, but soon stretches himself once more across the path, and thus by many a repeated trial puts the courage of the wanderer to the test. All the time the movements of the lion are attended with a dreadful noise: he breaks numberless branches with his tail; he roars, he growls; like the cat with the mouse, he plays with the object of his repeated and singular attacks, keeping him perpetually suspended between hope and fear. If the man engaged in this combat keeps up his courage,-if, as the Arabs express it, he holds fast his soul, then the brute at last quits him, and seeks some other prey. But if the lion perceives that he has to do with an opponent whose courage falters, whose voice trembles, who does not venture to utter a menace, then, to terrify him still more, he redoubles the described manoeuvres, he approaches his victim, pushes him from the path, then leaves him, and approaches him again, and enjoys the agony of the wretch, until at last he tears him to pieces." (P. 468.)

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THE

HE Channel Islands have deservedly "won golden opinions from all sorts of people," who have had the good fortune to make their acquaintance. Among them there is delightful boating, unrivalled seafishing, a genial climate, and plenty of scope for "pic-nicing" and seashore rambles. There is abundant employment, too, for the naturalist, the artist, and the antiquarian; and there is much to interest the student of men and manners,-much in the current customs of the islands which appears to us quaint and antiquated, being, in fact, lingering relics of the Medieval period.

It is true that the scenery of these islands is nowhere on a very grand scale, but it is always pleasing, and often highly picturesque and impressive. The highest point of Sark-the wildest of the group-is only 365 feet above the sea-level; but the imposing effect of its scenery is out of all proportion to its really trifling dimensions. Each island has its own peculiar character more distinctly marked than one would suppose likely in a group so nearly associated. The coast-line is very diversified, sometimes showing gently-sloping sandy beaches of considerable extent, at others forming secluded little bays, each with its narrow strip of silvery sand, enclosed by walls of rock which rise steeply in the most picturesque variety of form, richly dyed with lichens and mosses, and washed by a sea most "deeply, darkly, beautifully blue." We cannot call to mind a more lovely example of this kind of scenery than the well-known Moulin Huet Bay, in Guernsey. The south of Guernsey and north of Jersey afford many scenes of this class-beautiful nooks, which once seen, cannot fail often afterwards to "flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude." Of a totally different character is St. Ouen's Bay, in Jersey, the noblest of all the bays of the Channel Islands, bounded by a range of sand-hills, from which the loose sand has been swept in eastward, converting a large tract of country into one great desert. Respecting this singular district, Mr. Ansted says:

"Owing to the prevalence of westerly winds, the sands covering the wide flat of St. Ouen's Bay-the largest expanse of unbroken sand in the Channel Islands-are blown steadily onwards, and have at length not only covered the low hills near the shore, but have risen to, and partially overwhelmed the table-land of the interior. It is extremely interesting to watch this almost African expanse of undulating sands from the coast, in windy weather. The horizon is lost in the misty air, loaded with fine particles of sand, constantly in motion, whether the gale comes from the west or from the east. Since, however, winds from the former quarter

*The Channel Islands. By DAVID THOMAS ANSTED, M.A., F.R.S., &c., and ROBERT GORDON LATHAM, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., &c.; with illustrations drawn by Paul J. Naftel, Member of the London Society of Painters in Water Colours. London: W. H. Allen & Co.

VOL. II. NO. VII.

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