birds, insects, and butterflies are all spoken of by Mr. Bates in
his chapter on the natural features of the district, and it is
evident that none of these classes of beings escaped the
observation of his watchful intelligence. The account of the
foraging ants of the genus Eciton is certainly marvellous, and
would, even of itself, be sufficient to stamp the recorder of
their habits as a man of no ordinary mark.

The last chapter of Mr. Bates' work contains the account of his
excursions beyond Ega. Fonteboa, Tunantins--a small semi-Indian
settlement, 240 miles up the stream--and San Paulo de Olivenca,
some miles higher up, were the principal places visited, and new
acquisitions were gathered at each of these localities. In the
fourth month of Mr. Bates' residence at the last-named place, a
severe attack of ague led to the abandonment of the plans he had
formed of proceeding to the Peruvian towns of Pebas and
Moyobamba, and "so completing the examination of the Natural
History of the Amazonian plains up to the foot of the Andes."
This attack, which seemed to be the culmination of a gradual
deterioration of health, caused by eleven years' hard work under
the tropics, induced him to return to Ega, and finally to Para,
where he embarked, on the 2nd June 1859, for England. Naturally
enough, Mr. Bates tells us he was at first a little dismayed at
leaving the equator, "where the well-balanced forces of Nature
maintain a land-surface and a climate typical of mind, and order
and beauty," to sail towards the "crepuscular skies" of the cold
north. But he consoles us by adding the remark that "three years'
renewed experience of England" have convinced him "how
incomparably superior is civilised life to the spiritual
sterility of half-savage existence, even if it were passed in the