guica das vargens), or sloth of the flooded lands. Some travellers in South America have described the sloth as very nimble in its native woods, and have disputed the justness of the name which has been bestowed on it. The inhabitants of the Amazons region, however, both Indians and descendants of the Portuguese, hold to the common opinion, and consider the sloth as the type of laziness. It is very common for one native to call another, in reproaching him for idleness, ‘‘bicho do Embaiiba” (beast of the Cecropia tree); the leaves of the Cecropia being the food of the sloth. It is a strange sight to watch the uncouth creature, fit production of these silent shades, lazily moving from branch to branch. Every movement betrays, not indolence exactly, but extreme caution. He never looses his hold from one branch without first securing himself to the next, and when he does not immediately find a bough to grasp with the rigid hooks into which his paws are so curiously transformed, he raises his body, supported on his hind legs, and claws around in search of a fresh foothold. After watching the animal for about half an hour I gave him a charge of shot; he fell with a terrific crash, but caught a bough, in his descent, with his powerful claws, and remained suspended. Our Indian lad tried to climb the tree, but was driven back by swarms of stinging ants; the poor little fellow slid down in a sad predicament, and plunged into the brook to free himself. Two days afterwards I found the body of the sloth on the ground: the animal having dropped on the relaxation of the muscles a few hours after death. In one of our voyages, Mr. Wallace and I saw a sloth (B. infuscatus) swimming across a river, at a place where it was probably three hundred yards broad. I believe it is not generally known that this animal takes to the water. Our men caught the beast, cooked, and ate him.

In returning from these trips we were sometimes benighted on the campos. We did not care for this on moonlit nights, when there was no danger of losing the path. The great heat felt in the middle hours of the day is much mitigated by four o’clock in the afternoon; a few birds then make their appearance; small flocks of ground doves run about the stony hillocks; parrots pass over and sometimes settle in the ilhas; pretty little finches of several species, especially one kind, streaked with olive-brown and yellow, and somewhat resembling our yellow hammer, but I believe not belonging to the same genus, hop about the grass, enlivening the place with a few musical notes. The Carashtie {(Mimus) also then resumes its mellow, blackbird-like song; and two or three species of humming-bird, none of which however are peculiar to the district, flit about from tree to tree. On the other hand, the little blue-and-yellow-striped lizards, which abound amongst the herbage during the scorching heats of midday, retreat towards this hour to their hiding-places; together with the day-flying insects and the numerous campo butterflies. Some of these latter resemble greatly our English species found in heathy places—namely, a fritillary, Argynnis (Euptoieta) Hegesia, and two smaller kinds, which are deceptively like the little Nemeobius Lucina. After sunset the air becomes delightfully cool and fragrant with fruits and flowers. The nocturnal animals then come forth. A monstrous hairy spider, five inches in expanse (Mygale

Blondii), of a brown colour with yellowish lines along its stout legs-which is very common here, inhabiting broad tubular galleries smoothly lined with silken web—may be then caught on the watch at the mouth of its burrow. It is only seen at night, and I think does not wander far from its den; the gallery is about two inches in diameter, and runs in a slanting direction, about two feet from the surface of the soil. As soon as it is night, swarms of goatsuckers suddenly make their appearance, wheeling about in a noiseless, ghostly manner, in chase of night-flying insects. They sometimes descend and settle on a low branch, or even on the pathway close to where one is walking, and then squatting down on their heels are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding soil. One kind (Hydropsalis psalidurus?) has a long forked tail. Inthe daytime they are concealed in the wooded ilhas, where I very often saw them crouched and sleeping on the ground in the dense shade. They make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground. Their breeding time is in the rainy season, and fresh eggs are found from December to June. Birds have not one uniform time for nidification here, as in temperate latitudes. Gulls and plovers lay in September, when the sandbanks are exposed in mid-river in the dry season. Later in the evening, the singular notes of the goatsuckers are heard, one species crying, Quao, Quao, another Chuck-co-co-cao; and these are repeated at intervals far into the night in the most monotonous manner. A great number of toads are seen on the bare sandy pathways soon after sunset. One of them was quite a colossus, about seven inches in length and three in height. This big fellow would never move out of the way until we were close to him. If we jerked him out of the path with a stick, he would slowly recover himself, and then turn round to have a good impudent stare. I have counted as many as thirty of these monsters within a distance of half a mile.

The surface of the campos is disfigured in all directions by earthy mounds and conical hillocks, the work of many different species of white ants. Some of these structures are five feet high, and formed of particles of earth worked into a material as hard as stone; others are smaller, and constructed ina looser manner. The ground is everywhere streaked with the narrow covered galleries which are built up by the insects of grains of earth different in colour from the surrounding soil, to protect themselves whilst conveying materials wherewith to build their cities—for such the tumuli may be considered—or carrying their young from one hillock to another. The same covered ways are spread over all the dead timber, and about the decaying roots of herbage, which serve as food to the white ants. An examination of these tubular passages or arcades in any part of the district, or a peep into one of the tumuli, reveals always a throng of eager, busy creatures. I became very much interested in these insects while staying at Santarem, where many circumstances favoured the study of their habits, and examined several hundred colonies in endeavouring to clear up obscure points in their natural history. Very little, up to that date, had been recorded of the constitution and economy of their communities, owing doubtless to their not being found in northern and central Europe, and therefore

not within reach of European observers. I will give a short summary of my observations, and with this we shall have done with Santarem and its neighbourhood.* White ants are small, pale-coloured, soft-bodied insects, having scarcely anything in common with true ants, except their consisting, in each species and family, of several distinct orders of individuals or castes which live together in populous, organised communities. in both there are, besides the males and females, a set of individuals of no fully-developed sex, immensely more numerous than their brothers and sisters, whose task is to work and care for the young brood. In true ants this class of the community consists of undeveloped females, and when it comprises, as is the case in many species, individuals of different structure, the functions of these do not seem to be rigidly defined. ‘The contrary happens in the Termites, and this perhaps shows that the organisation of their communities has reached a higher stage, the division of labour being more complete. ‘The neuters in these wonderful insects are always divided into two classes—fighters and workers; both are blind, and each keeps to its own task; the one to build, make covered roads, nurse the young brood from the egg upwards, take care of the king and queen, who are the progenitors of the whole colony, and secure the exit of the males and females, when they acquire wings and fly out to pair and disseminate the race; the other to defend the community against all comers. Ants and termites are also widely different in their mode of growth, or, as it is called, metamorphosis. Ants in their early stage are footless grubs, which, before they reach the adult state, pass through an intermediate quiescent stage (pupa) inclosed ina membrane. Termites, on the contrary, have a similar form when they emerge from the egg to that which they retain throughout life; the chief difference being the gradual acquisition of eyes and wings in the sexual individuals during the latter stages of growth. Termites and true ants, in fact, belong to two widely dissimilar orders of insects, and the analogy between them is only a general one of habits. The mode of growth of Termites and the active condition of their younger stages (larva and pupa) make the constitution of their communities much more difficult of comprehension than that of ants; hence how many castes existed, and what sort of individuals they were composed of, if not males and females, have always been puzzles to naturalists in the absence of direct observation.

What a strange spectacle is offered to us in the organisation of these insect communities! Nothing analogous occurs amongst the higher animals. Social instincts exist in many species of mammals and birds, where numerous individuals unite to build common habitations, as we see in the case of weaver-birds and beavers; but the principle of division of labour, the setting apart of classes of individuals for certain employments, occur only in human societies in an advanced state of civilisation. In all the higher animals there are only two orders of individuals

My original notes on the Termites, comprising all details, were sent to Professor Westwood (Oxford) in 1854 and 1855; they were not printed in England, but have been translated into German, and published by Dr. Hagen, with his monograph of the family, in the ‘‘ Linnea Entomologica,” 12 Band, Stettin, 1858, p. 207, ff. 14

as far as bodily structure is concerned—namely, males and females. The wonderful part in the history of the Termites is, that not only is there a rigid division of labour, but nature has given to each class a structure of body adapting it to the kind of labour it has to perform. The males and females form a class apart; they do no kind of work, but in the course of growth acquire wings to enable them to issue forth” and disseminate their kind. The workers and soldiers are wingless, ' and differ solely in the shape and armature of the head. ‘This member in the labourers is smooth and rounded, the mouth being adapted for the working of the materials in building the hive; in the soldiers the head is of very large size, and is provided in almost every kind with special organs of offence or defence in the form of horny processes

—8. Soldiers of different species of White Ants.—g9. Ordinary shape of worker.— 10. Winged class.

resembling pikes, tridents, and so forth. Some species do not possess these extraordinary projections, but have, in compensation, greatly lengthened jaws, which are shaped in some kinds as sickles, in others as sabres and saws. The course of human events in our day seems, unhappily, to make it more than ever necessary for the citizens of civilised and industrious communities to set apart a numerous armed class for the protection of the rest; in this nations only do what nature has of old done for the Termites. The soldier Termes, however, has not only the fighting instinct and function: he is constructed as a soldier, and carries his weapons not in his hand, but growing out of his body.

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