A naturalist's sojourn in Jamaica

Preface

Natural History is far too much a science of dead things; a necrology. It is mainly conversant with dry skins furred or feathered, blackened, shrivelled, and hay-stuffed ; with objects, some admirably beautiful, some hideously ugly, impaled on pins, and arranged in rows in cork drawers ; with uncouth forms, disgusting to sight and smell, bleached and shrunken, suspended by threads and immersed in spirit (in defiance of the aphorism, that he who is born to he hanged will never be drowned”) in glass bottles. These distorted things are described ; their scales, plates, feathers counted ; their forms copied, all shrivelled and stiffened as they are ; their colours, changed and modified by death or partial decay, carefully set down ; their limbs, members, and organs measured, and the results recorded in thousandths of an inch ; two names are given to every one ; the whole is enveloped in a mystic cloud of Graeco- Latino-English phraseology (often barbaric enough); — and this is Natural History !

Of the hundred thousand animals which are con-

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sidered as known to naturalists,” it is probably much within the mark to assert that ninety thousand are ‘‘ known ” only in such sort as is described above.

What should we think if the world were to collect from Egypt the tens of thousands of mummies that are said to be entombed in the mighty catacombs of that country, and having placed them in museums should appoint learned men minutely to measure their differing features and limbs, to describe their appearance with exactitude, and to depict their portraits in all the leathery blackness of their physiognomy ; then to give each a name, and record the whole in a book ; — what should we think if the world would call this Egyptian History ?

It is manifest that there is not an iota of History in either the one or the other. For History is the record of the actions of men, their relations to other men, the circumstances in which they acted, their characters, the influence of their lives upon society, their connexion with the times preceding and following their own, and other points of interest, not one of which could be gathered from a description of their dead and preserved bodies, though ever so exact and minute. So, that alone is worthy to be called Natural History, which investigates and records the condition of living things, of things in a state of nature ; if animals, of living animals : — which tells of their ‘‘ sayings and doings,” their varied notes and

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utterances, songs and cries ; their actions, in ease and under the pressure of circumstances ; their affections and passions, towards their young, towards each other, towards other animals, towards man: their various arts and devices, to protect their progeny, to procure food, to escape from their enemies, to defend themselves from attacks; their ingenious resources for concealment ; their stratagems to overcome their victims ; their modes of bringing forth, of feeding, and of training, their offspring ; the relations of their structure to their wants and habits ; the countries in which they dwell ; their connexion with the inanimate world around them, mountain or plain, forest or field, barren heath or bushy dell, open savanna or wild hidden glen, river, lake, or sea : — this would be indeed zoology ^ i. e» the science of living creatures. And if we have their portraits, let us have them drawn from the life, while the bright eyes are glancing, and the flexible features express the emotions of the mind within, and the hues, so often fleeting and evanescent, exist in their unchanged reality, and the attitudes are full of the elegance and grace that free, wild nature assumes.

The author would not be misunderstood. He is far from despising the labours of those who describe and catalogue the specimens that travellers send to the cabinets of Europe. Careful and minute descriptions, accurate admeasurements, and distinctive names

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are absolutely indispensable to science ; hut they must not he confounded with science itself. Valuable as these details are, they form only the steppingstone by which we arrive at the knowledge of animals ; or rather they are the cumbrous machinery by which that knowledge is preserved and communicated to the world. The knowledge of the name, position, and size of every rope in a ship is absolutely necessary to a seaman, for without it there could be no precision in command, no cooperation in obedience ; — but surely it is \ioiseamanship; and he who should suppose himself a skilful navigator, with only such knowledge, though acquired with the most minute pains, by actual study of a ship lying in port, would find himself egregiously mistaken, when he came to battle with sky and sea, tempests and billows and currents, quicksands, and bristling rocks, and the breakers of a lee shore.

Let closet-science take its true place as the handmaid of Natural History ; arranging and appropriating the observations of the true naturalist, and enabling him to record them with precision. The former may be compared to the shelves, drawers, and pigeon-holes of a cabinet, carefully arranged, affording a place for every thing; the latter to a room-full of valuable objects and curiosities, thrown promiscuously in a heap. The objects themselves are almost unavailable until they be arranged in the shelves and drawers appro-

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IX priated to them ; yet it is obvious that the shelves are for the sake of the objects, not the objects for the sake of the shelves. The means, however, are too often treated as if they were the end.

The efforts of many naturalists, naturalists in the proper sense of the word, have been and are directed zealously towards the right object, a real knowledge of animals. Many have followed in the steps of the venerable Gilbert White, and have discovered thousands of facts of the highest interest, which they have communicated in graphic language. We consequently possess the living portraitures of many animals, drawn from life, and depicted with a master’s hand. Most of the animals of Europe, at least the Vertehrata^ have been more or less studied at home, and the Birds of America have found worthy biographers. But if we look at the expanded world beside, how little is really known of its living treasures ; how little even of the zoology of England’s vast colonial possessions !

The writer of the present volume has endeavoured to add a trifle to the amount of zoological knowledge. He lately paid a visit to Jamaica, one of the loveliest islands of the tropics, where the eighteen months of his sojourn were almost exclusively devoted to Natural History. The memoirs presented in the following pages may claim at least one excellence, they were drawn up verbatim on the spot, in the midst of

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the animated beings which they describe ; they are, generally, not the results of brief and transient observations of their subjects, but of a protracted acquaintance with them, in which feature after feature was delineated, and line after line was added, from time to time. The Author has aimed to do more than merely give a record of the habits and instincts of animals ; he has essayed to describe (as well as feeble words may attain to do it) somewhat of the glory and loveliness of the scenes in which they dwell ; and he has endeavoured to do this with a kind of panoramic effect, so that the reader might have before his mind a succession of pictures, as it were, of a beauteous tropic island.

In the arrangement of the Work the form of a Journal has been maintained to such an extent as to give a slight thread of continuity to the whole. It is not, however, a Diary; chronological sequence having been always made to yield to the superior advantage of unity and completeness in the exhibition of the various subjects. The Author has grouped together all the information that he had collected on each subject, though obtained at different times ; and thus the memoirs generally take the form of monographs more or less complete.

The following pages are enriched with many papers from another pen. The Author considers it one of the happiest reminiscences of a visit unusually

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XI pleasant, that it gave him the acquaintance of a gentleman whose talents and acquirements would have done honour to any country, but whose excellencies as a man of science, as a gentleman, and as a Christian, shine with peculiar lustre in the comparative seclusion of his native island. The Author has long had the privilege of his correspondence ; — he enjoys the still higher privilege of calling him friend. It is with no small gratification that on the title-page of this volume, he can again associate with his own, the honoured name of Richard Hill, of Spanish Town.

In the progress of the work through the press the memoirs communicated by this gentleman have greatly accumulated. The Author (or rather as far as these are concerned, the compiler) has felt loath to withhold the valuable imformation collected by the zeal and industry of his friend, and so kindly placed at his disposal ; though, being contained in letters, a considerable number of which are dated subsequently to his own departure from the island, they still further attenuate that thread of continuity ” alluded to above, which before was sufiiciently slender. The Author ventures to hope that the greater degree of completeness thus attained in the survey of the Jamaican Fauna, will atone for this lack of constructive unity.

Twenty-four new species of animals are described

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in the following pages, distributed nearly equally through the classes of Mammalia, Reptiles, and Fishes. The notices of Birds will be found but slight, a volume having been already devoted to the Author’s researches on this beautiful and interesting class of animals.

The Author begs to express his tbanks to the officers in the zoological and botanical departments of the British Museum, for much valuable assistance, kindly and courteously rendered ; and to all the friends both in England and Jamaica, to whom he has been indebted for suggestions or information.

De Beauvoir Square, London,

September, 1851.

Incidents of the Voyage. Change of climate. Fin-whale. Capture of a Bonito. Snipe-fishes. Loggerhead Turtle. Portuguese Man-of-war. Troop of Whales. Dolphins playing. Towing-net. Glass Shells. Spirula. Barnacles. Porpita. Flying- fishes. Their motion proved to be real Flight. Three kinds. A new Species described. Starlight and Sunrise from the Maintop. Moonlight Evenings. Land. Montserrat. Its beauty. First sight of J amaica. Blue Mountain Peak. Coast at night - - - Page 1 — 19

Kingston and Port Royal. Beauty of the scene. The Mountains. The City. Canoes on the Sea. Black Pilots. Calm. The Towing-net. Gulf-weed. Fishes. Curious Annellide. The Sea-breeze. Verdant Islets. Pelicans on the Rocks. A Walk on the Palisades. Cocoa-nut Palms. Cacti. Acacia. Seaweeds, Sponges, and Corallines. Shells. Chsetodon. The Hemiramphus. Garfish - - 19 — 25

Alligator Pond. Sterility of the Coast. Carlisle. Sugar-cultivation. Alligator Pond. Flowers on the Shore. Insects. Prickly Pear. Humming-bird. Beautiful Spider. Ride up the Valley. Wasps. Honeycomb Limestone. Shells. Peculiar Vegetation. Orchidese. Fine Prospects. Collecting Chitons. The Painted Swift-foot - - 26 — 35

Bluefields Bay. Ship strikes on the Reef. View of the Land from the Bay. Pelicans and Frigate-birds. Transparency of the Water. Savanna-le-Mar. Stores. Gardens

35—39

Bluefields. Description of the Estate. The Southern Cross. Aspect of the Forest. Parasitic Plants. Wild Pines. Tropic Birch. Soldier-crab. Calabash and Orchids. Long-tailed Humming-bird. Vivid impression of the scene - 39 — 50

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Contents

Belmont Beach. Creek. Calling-crabs. CIcindela. Cave Swallows. Sponges. Holothuriae. Swimming-crab. Inscribed Solenette. Corals and their Parasites. Stinging Corals. Curious Annellida _ _ > 50 — 56

Market Day. Loading Canoes for Market. A Paddle across the Bay. Animals seen on the bottom of the Sea. Helmet Shells. Carrion-beetle. Lunar Rainbow. Leaf of Life

57—61