This may seem strange at first; but I have journeyed through tropical forests that realized completely this sketch, so far as stillness and silence are concerned. A modern and most accomplished naturalist says of a Jamaica virgin forest, “Animal life is almost unseen; the solitude is scarcely broken by the voices of birds, except that now and then the rain-bird or the hunter (large cat-tailed cuckoos that love the shade) sound their startling rattle, or the mountain partridge utters those mournful cooings which are like the moans of a dying man.”—Gosse’s Jamaica, p. 198. Footnote 62: From κάλαμος (_calamus_), a reed. Footnote 63: Ansted’s “Ancient World,” p. 82. Footnote 64: Mesozoic: _i.e._ middle life period; _mesos_, middle, _zoos_, life. Footnote 65: The Religious Tract Society. Footnote 66: Lyell’s “Manual of Elementary Geology.” Postscript, p. 13. Footnote 67: Ansted’s Geology, vol i. p. 306. Footnote 68: Ichnites; from _ichnon_, a footstep, and _eidos_, like. Footnote 69: _Ornithos_, a bird, and _ichnon_. Footnote 70: Marsupial, from _marsupium_, a pouch; animals of the fourth order of Cuvier, that have a pouch in which the young are carried. Footnote 71: Batrachian, from _batrachos_, a frog; animals in Cuvier’s fourth class of reptiles. Footnote 72: _Cheir_, the hand, _therion_, a wild beast; a wild beast with a foot like a hand. Footnote 73: From _labyrinthus_, a labyrinth, and _odous_, a tooth; so called from the labyrinthine structure of the tooth. Footnote 74: In some cases we find, corresponding to a set of footmarks, a continuous furrow, presumed to be the impression of a tail dragged along the sand by the animal while walking. Footnote 75: Ansted’s Ancient World, pp. 125–127. Footnote 76: Knight’s Cyclopædia of Arts, &c. Footnote 77: Quarterly Review, May, 1852. Article on Roger de Coverley. Footnote 78: This is a corruption, we are inclined to think, of the word “layers;” one of those provincial corruptions of the Queen’s English that get stereotyped. Footnote 79: Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise. pp. 351, 352. Footnote 80: A fossil bivalve, allied to the oyster, and very abundant in the secondary strata. Footnote 81: Belemnite, from _belemnos_, a dart, and so called from its arrow-headed shape. Footnote 82: Saurian, from _sauros_, a lizard, the name by which the great family of lizards is designated. Footnote 83: From _ichthus_, a fish, and _sauros_, a lizard; so called from its resemblance to both. Footnote 84: Heteroclite; _heteros_, another, and _klitos_, inclining; a word applied to any thing or person deviating from common forms. Footnote 85: Very unlike the alligator, whose eyes are placed at a considerable distance behind the nose. Footnote 86: From _pleiōn_, more, and _sauros_, a lizard; because it is more like a lizard than the Ichthyosaurus. Footnote 87: