As I resumed my seat, a great beetle, like a polished emerald, alighted close beside me,—not heavy and blundering, like a June-bug or scarab, but nervous, flicking its wings wasp-like, ready at an instant’s alarm to whirr away as swiftly as light. A beautifully marked Longicorn beetle buzzed past and alighted ten feet up a sapling, leaving me eying it enviously, atremble with all my boyhood’s collecting ardor. Heliconias sailed slowly past and one of the beautiful transparent jungle butterflies alighted at my feet, with only a few dots of azure revealing the position of the wings. White and yellow butterflies floated high in air, where a hundred kinds of flowers flashed out among the green foliage. Lizards were abundant in this little clearing, slipping along fallen trees with sudden rushes and halts, or tearing madly after each other with loud rustlings through the fallen leaves. Some were beautifully colored, splashed with blue, orange and green; while other dark ones had a network of delicate light lines crossing the back, cutting the creatures up into likenesses of small lichened leaves. When the sun shone out brightly, two or three minute midges danced before my eyes—otherwise I was free from the “insect scourges” of the tropics! The trees on this and all later days constantly drew from us exclamations of delight. They were magnificent, awe-inspiring, and if I could think of any stronger word of appreciation I should apply it at once to them. Their immensity and apparent age made one reflect upon the transiency of animal and human existence. Even the long-lived Parrots and Macaws perching on their branches seemed like may-flies of a day compared with these giants of the jungle, which had watched century upon century pass. As I looked at the circle of trees bordering the clearing—a clearing which itself was the result of the felling of only one such giant—the great variety of trees was at once noticeable. Near relatives—brothers and sisters, or fathers and sons—could not exist within each other’s shadow. So it was that a dozen kinds were visible from my seat. One splendid fellow sent up a perfectly rounded grayish column, one hundred and fifty feet or more, propped with a single great fox-colored buttress, sweeping gracefully out from the weaker side of the ground hold of the trunk, like the train of a court lady’s dress. Another column was round but deeply fluted, the trunk being rimmed with a succession of scallops, while in a third tree known as Paddle-wood, this was carried to an extreme, the trunk being little more than the point of juncture of a dozen thin blade-like sheets of wood. The whole was of a beautiful leaden-gray color. The moras were the biggest and tallest trees within sight, and sent out huge buttresses, twenty feet in all directions with space between them for a good-sized room. The impression of security was perfect—it seemed as if the strongest of winds could never overcome such a reinforced structure.