In the same regions is a bird of the
Bittern tribe, marked with brown and yellow in
a wonderfully similar manner; whose cries,
during its period of activity in the evening
and night, can scarcely be distinguished,
even by a practised ear, from the howlings
of the jaguar in the remotest recesses of
the forest. In the language of the natives
and by the Creoles, it is called the " Tiger
Bird."

In the waters of the Upper Essequibo, there
abounds a fish—to use the words of a
distinguished traveller and naturalist—" entirely
of a reddish-brown colour, spotted irregularly
with different-sized spots of black, from which
it has received the name of Tiger Fish."  Its
habits are almost unknown, but it may most
probably be classed with the bird and the cat,
as predatory in disposition.

Among the moco-moco leaves which fringe
the rivers and creeks, a fierce-looking grub,
arrayed in a party-coloured suit of the
same pattern, may frequently be observed
greedily devouring the numerous aphides.
To complete the list, two trees are found
in the woods—the Bourra-courra or Letter-wood,
and the Itithibourra-bulli or Tiger-wood
—both of which, but more especially the
latter, closely resemble in their rich and
beautiful markings the skin of the jaguar.
Once I picked from the river part of the
petal of a flower, with the same combination
of colours. Possibly, these few instances of an
adhesion, to one type, are far from being all
that exist.

But the most remarkable likenesses are
those which are to be found existing between
objects of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Parts of plants resembling insects, and insects
resembling portions of plants, may frequently
be met with; witness the many pretty forms
of the orchis tribe—the bee-orchis, in which
that insect appears to be probing the nectaries
of the flower—the spider and the fly orchis.
Again, I may instance an oval, broad-backed
beetle, which I captured, last summer, in great
abundance, in that wild spot—so noted for
the rarest treasures of the entomologist and
the botanist—Castle Eden Dene. In form
and colour it so closely resembled the green
seeds of a species of hemlock, that
numbers had been emptied from my sweeping-net
before its true character was discovered.
Nature had given it the instinct to increase
the deception by holding its short, delicate
limbs close to its body, and keeping them
stiff and rigid during the time it was handled.

In the tropics these resemblances are even
more singular and illusive; scores of insects
are found in Guiana curiously analogous to a
vegetable in appearance and in structure; the
foliaceous arrangement of the nervures of
their wings, the sprout-like character of the
head and legs, and, stranger still, the eggs
formed like the seed of a plant, are
unmistakeable—while their colour is in such perfect
harmony with the surrounding vegetation,
that numbers may be clustered amidst the
foliage of a neighbouring branch, without the
observer being at all aware of their presence.
Some are of a bright green, like a growing leaf
or one newly fallen from the tree; while,
in others, the extremities and edges of the
wings have a brown or yellowish tinge—
the semblance of leaves which have for
long strewed the ground, and are already
withering.

Nor do insects alone seem to lurk among
the petals of the gorgeous blossoms of the
Guiana Orchidæ: birds, reptiles, and even
small animals, are severally imitated. But it
is not to this tribe, or, indeed, to the flowers
exclusively of any other, that this character
solely appertains. I have just been examining
a vegetable production having the likeness of
a living thing, plucked on the banks of the
Essequibo, where the graceful tree on which it
grows is a native. It is the kernel of a nut
enclosed in a smooth and tough shell, about
the size of a walnut. The crumpled mass
which meets the eye on opening the shell
gives no indication of the singular form that
lies enveloped amid the many folds of filmy
skin; but this has only to be carefully
detached to call forth our expressions of
surprise and astonishment. The Chinese are
said to have formed their first letters from
the curved roots of vegetables; it is well that
this nut is not a native of China, and that
they confined their attention to the lower
extremity of the plant; for, had it been otherwise,
their love of complicated forms would
assuredly—to the supreme disgust of all who
attempted to acquire their language—have
made them model a character after this
kernel; and one fuller, if it were possible, of
stranger twistings and contortions than any
in their alphabet. There is a broad flat
head, with two distinctly marked eyes;
whence springs the future tree, and a long
tapering body, curled up like a ball. This
mimic snake, however, assumes not the
position of one in perfect health, but rather
seems to be writhing in the agonies of some
internal malady, or simulating a future Python,
newly-born, testing the elasticity of its body.
Hard and red, it looks as if it had been
exposed to the action of a violent heat, and
had been baked and stiffened during the
painful pangs of its death. In the West
Indies, as everybody knows, oysters grow
upon trees. Barnacle-geese were once thought
to do the same; and here, we have a tree
which we can well excuse the ignorant and
superstitious in believing to produce serpent
germs: the vital spark is only wanting.
Traces of serpent-worship have been found
among most of the nations of antiquity; and
there is abundant proof that it was prevalent
among the ancient inhabitants of Mexico and
South America. No doubt this singular tree
was considered sacred, from its intricate
connection with the objects of their reverence.
These " snake-nuts," as they are called, may