attraction at the summit.)

(**Footnote. There is reason to suppose the Curral to have been the
principal, although not the only centre of that submarine volcanic
action, during the continuance of which Madeira first emerged from the
sea, an event, which the evidence afforded by the limestone fossils of
St. Vincente (on the north side of the island) associates with the
tertiary epoch. See Paper by Dr. J. Macaulay in Edinburgh New
Philosophical Journal for October 1840.)

Although it is now the middle of winter, today's excursion afforded many
subjects of interest to a naturalist. Some beautiful ferns, of which even
the commonest one (Adiantum capillus-veneris) would have been much prized
by an English botanist as a very rare British species, occurred on the
dripping rocks by the roadside, and many wild plants were in flower on
the lower grounds. Even butterflies of three kinds, two of which (Colias
edusa and Cynthia cardui) are also found in Britain, occurred, although
in small numbers, and at the Pass of the Curral coleoptera of the genera
Pimelea and Scarites, were met with under stones along with minute
landshells, Bulimus lubricus, Clausilia deltostoma, and a Pupa.

LEAVE MADEIRA.

After a stay of eight days, we left Madeira for Rio de Janeiro, and on
January 2nd picked up the south-east trade wind, and passed through the
Cape de Verde Islands to the southward between Mayo and St. Jago. Two
days afterwards, in latitude 9 degrees 30 minutes North, and longitude 22
degrees 40 minutes West, a slight momentary shock, supposed to be the
effect of an earthquake, was felt throughout the ship.