The variety and interest of the observations made during his stay at Rio, when tropical nature was still a fresh and unexplored page to the young observer, are wonderful. Cabbage palms, liana creepers, luxuriant fern leaves--roads, bridges, and soil--planarian worms, frogs which climbed perpendicular sheets of glass, the light of fireflies, brilliant butterflies, fights between spiders and wasps, the victories of ants over difficulties, the habits of monkeys, the little Brazilian boys practising knife-throwing--all these came in turn under his watchful eyes and are vividly described. In July, 1832, Monte Video was reached, and the _Beagle_ was occupied in surveying the extreme southern and eastern coasts of America, south of La Plata, during the succeeding two years. During ten weeks at Maldonado an entertaining excursion to the River Polanco was made, and many a humorous remark appears in the Journal relating to it. "The greater number of the inhabitants [of European descent] had an indistinct idea that England, London, and North America were different names for the same place; but the better-informed well knew that London and North America were separate countries close together, and that England was a large town in London!" "Washing my face in the morning caused much speculation at the village of Las Minas; a superior tradesman closely cross-questioned me about so singular a practice." Among these rich descendants of Europeans Darwin felt as if he were among the inhabitants of Central Africa; so low can the proud superior race descend, that the distance between it and the negro appeared small indeed. The remarkable absence of trees in the country could not fail to provoke comment; but it is on the old-fashioned basis, and the young student does not get beyond the conclusion "that herbaceous plants, instead of trees, were created to occupy that wide area, which, within a period not very remote, has been raised above the waters of the sea." This appears in the first edition; but in 1845 these words were expunged, and the author says significantly "we must look to some other and unknown cause."