me in the eye, and the agony I suffered for about eight hours afterwards was indescribable. The sandfly is another insect that attacks the skin, and its bite is not less severe than that of the mosquito. Sand-flies are so small as to be hardly perceptible; they abound most in Demerara and Berbice.

There are a great number of snakes and serpents in the West Indies, but few of them, if we except those found in Martinique and St. Lucia, are at all

venomous.

As towards evening the grasshoppers and crickets are heard wherever there is vegetation, so is the light of the fire-fly every where seen:

"On he wheels,

Blazing by fits, as from excess of joy,
Each gush of light a gush of ecstasy.
Nor unaccompanied; thousands that fling.
A radiance all their own-not of the day-

Thousands as bright as he-from dusk till dawn,
Soaring, descending."

These little insects add materially to the beauty of an evening scene in the tropics.

The jiggers, or chegoes, or niguas, for they pass, or have passed, by all of these names, are very annoying little insects, which get into the feet and, if not taken out directly, frequently accumulate and cause great irritation, and, perhaps, some danger. Ligon, who describes them, tells us that "the Indian women have the best skill to take them out, which they do by putting in a small poynted pinne or needle at the hole where he came in, and winding the poynt about the bagge, losen him from the flesh, and so

take him out. He is of a blewish color, and is seene through the skinne, but the negroes, whose skinnes are of that color (or near it), are in ill case, for they cannot finde where they are, by which meanes they are many of them very lame. Some of the chegoes are poysonous, and after they are taken out will fester and rankle for a fortnight after they are gone."

I have thus noticed, as far as my limits will allow me, those animals, birds, and insects which are most common in the Antilles, and I must now say a word of the inhabitants of their lakes and rivers, and of the ocean that girds their shores.

The streams of the West Indies are nearly all well stocked with fish of various kinds, some of them very large. Of these the name of the mud-fish is the only one that now occurs to me; these are small, about the size of tench or carp, but very delicious when well dressed. In some places they are very numerous, and I have often caught as many as four dozen in an hour with hook and line.

But the sea is probably more productive than the rivers :

"Each creek and bay

With fry innumerable swarm, and shoals

Of fish glide under the green wave."

Of these the flying fish, which abound principally in Barbados, the jack fish, the butter fish, the turtle, the king fish, the dolphin, the sword fish, the snapper, the mullet, the crab, the cavalle, the conger-eel, the baracouta, the shark, the mud shark, and the whale are the most common; and all these, with the exception of the three last, are used for food.

Apropos of the conger-eel. In the Annual Register of 1794 we find the following extract of a letter, written by Mr. Lott, surgeon, of Rio Esequibo in South America, on the animal electricity of this fish. "The fish here called the drill-wisch or conger-eel is a kind of eel, in length from one to five feet, and of this singular quality, that it produces all the known effects of electricity-the like shock, and the like real or supposed cures. I, at first, cured fowls grown paralytic by contraction of the nerves; and then, proceeding from animals to men, by electrifying a paralytic, by striking his knees three times with one of these fishes fresh taken. The shock was such as to throw him down, with the two persons who held him; but he soon got up, and instead of being carried from the place of operation, walked away as if nothing had ever ailed him. With this admirable eel I have likewise cured nervous disorders, fevers, and very severe headachs, to which the slaves here are peculiarly subject; some of these wonders were performed before the Governor and several other persons of consideration."

The other fish which I have named are already well known to naturalists, and the greater part of them to epicures: the luxury of the turtle, and the richness of the crab are highly appreciated by the latter. By the way, I had nearly forgotten to mention the land crabs, which are so plentiful in the West Indies, and form one of the first delicacies of the table when properly dressed. For the very curious history of

these animals I refer my reader to the pages of Du Tertre, Brown, Goldsmith, and Edwards, who have described them more minutely than I have either time or space for, and also to Mr. Barclay's "Present State of Slavery in the West Indies," where the accounts given of the mountain crabs of Jamaica are at one and the same time instructive and amusing.

And here I must wind up my chapter on the natural history of the Antilles. I could hardly have said less on the subject, and yet the present volume is too small to admit of my saying more. I will, • however, conclude with stating that a wide field is open to the curious; that those are lands where the naturalist could not fail to meet a reward for his researches, and that if a few of the industrious and the talented would journey thither, and ransack the vast and interesting labyrinth of beauties that now lie concealed, they might lay open to the world a store of hidden information, and derive for their trouble, not only fame, but that great stimulus to exertion, emolument-in a word, to use the expression of the speculator, they might make it pay.

CHAPTER LXIII.

MANY MEMS. ON MANY MATTERS.

"A thousand things have I to tell; A thousand things, and more."

Old Ballad.

A THOUSAND things and more!! Heaven save the mark! Time and space forbid it, and who shall defy time and space? What have I omitted in my little tales of the tropics that should still leave me a thousand things? Have I not furnished the reader with the whole list of "accidents and offences" use a newspaper phrase) that have occurred from the two days previous to my departure from Old England, to the two days after my arrival in the same land of my fathers? Have I not, moreover, told of earthquakes and hurricanes, of the natural productions, and the natural history of the Antilles? What more shall I do? Why, I will wind up the long narrative of my memoirs with a chapter of many mems. on many matters;" and suppose I commence with

CREOLE LADIES.

"Skin more fair,

More glorious head and far more glorious hair;
Eyes full of grace and quickness."

FAIR daughters of the tropics, what shall I

say of

them? Reader, Ecoutez si vous voulez entendre.