Butterfly
& Amazonia Books

“There are… few places in England where during one summer more than thirty species of butterfly can be collected; but here, in about two months, we obtained more than four hundred distinct species, many of extraordinary size, or of the most brilliant colours.

There is, however, one natural feature of this country, the interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated in a single walk: it is the”virgin forest.” Here no one who has any feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be disappointed; the sombre shade, scarce illumined by a single direct ray even of the tropical sun, the enormous size and height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a hundred feet of more without throwing out a single brand, the strange buttresses around the based some, the spiny or furrowed stems others, the curious and even extraordinary creepers and climbers that wind around them, hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, sometimes curling and twisting on the ground like giant serpents, then mounting to the very tops of trees, thence throwing down roots and fibres which hang moving in the air, or twisting round each other form ropes and cables of every variety and size, and often of the most perfect regularity…. the strange fruits and seeds that lie rotting in the ground – taken altogether surpass description, and produce feelings in the beholder of admiration and awe.

It is here, too, that the rarest birds, the most lovely insects, and the most interesting mammals and reptiles are to be found. Here lurk the jaguar and the boa-constrictor, and here amid the densest shade the bell bird tolls his peal”