in these tropical forests light does not seem to
be necessary for their existence. The air is enough for the vegetable
growth, whether it be large or small, tree or plant, and all the heat
required for the development of their sap is derived not from the
surrounding atmosphere, but from the bosom of the soil itself, where it
is stored up as in an enormous stove.

And on the bromelias, grass plantains, orchids, cacti, and in short all
the parasites which formed a little forest beneath the large one, many
marvelous insects were they tempted to pluck as though they had been
genuine blossoms--nestors with blue wings like shimmering watered silk,
leilu butterflies reflexed with gold and striped with fringes of green,
agrippina moths, ten inches long, with leaves for wings, maribunda bees,
like living emeralds set in sockets of gold, and legions of lampyrons or
pyrophorus coleopters, valagumas with breastplates of bronze, and green
elytrae, with yellow light pouring from their eyes, who, when the night
comes, illuminate the forest with their many-colored scintillations.

"What wonders!" repeated the enthusiastic girl.

"You are at home, Minha, or at least you say so," said Benito, "and that
is the way you talk of your riches!"

"Sneer away, little brother!" replied Minha; "such beautiful things are
only lent to us; is it not so, Manoel? They come from the hand of the
Almighty and belong to the world!"

"Let Benito laugh on, Minha," said Manoel. "He hides it very well, but
he is a poet himself when his time comes, and he admires as much as
we do all these beauties of nature. Only when his gun is on his arm,
good-by to poetry!"

"Then be a poet now," replied the girl.

"I am a poet," said Benito. "O! Nature-enchanting, etc."

We may confess, however, that in forbidding him to use his gun Minha
had imposed on him a genuine privation. There was no lack of game in
the woods, and several magnificent opportunities he had declined with
regret.

In some of the less wooded parts, in places where the breaks were
tolerably spacious, they saw several pairs of ostriches, of the species
known as _"naudus,"_ from four to five feet high, accompanied by their
inseparable _"seriemas,"_ a sort of turkey, infinitely better from an
edible point of view than the huge birds they escort.

"See what that wretched promise costs me," sighed Benito, as, at a
gesture from his sister, he replaced under his arm the gun which had
instinctively g