The Road Is Often
Marked By Crosses, In The Place Of Milestones, To Signify
Where Human Blood Has Been Spilled.
On the evening of the
23rd we arrived at Rio, having finished our pleasant little
excursion.
During the remainder of my stay at Rio, I resided in a
cottage at Botofogo Bay. It was impossible to wish for
anything more delightful than thus to spend some weeks
in so magnificent a country. In England any person fond
of natural history enjoys in his walks a great advantage, by
always having something to attract his attention; but in
these fertile climates, teeming with life, the attractions are
so numerous, that he is scarcely able to walk at all.
The few observations which I was enabled to make were
almost exclusively confined to the invertebrate animals. The
existence of a division of the genus Planaria, which inhabits
the dry land, interested me much. These animals are of so
simple a structure, that Cuvier has arranged them with the
intestinal worms, though never found within the bodies of
other animals. Numerous species inhabit both salt and fresh
water; but those to which I allude were found, even in the
drier parts of the forest, beneath logs of rotten wood, on
which I believe they feed. In general form they resemble
little slugs, but are very much narrower in proportion, and
several of the species are beautifully coloured with
longitudinal stripes. Their structure is very simple: near the
middle of the under or crawling surface there are two small
transverse slits, from the anterior one of which a funnel-
shaped and highly irritable mouth can be protruded.
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