"The country is also very rich in spiders; they are of wonderful diversity of form. Some of them are so large and their webs so strong that birds are said to be caught in them. There are house spiders, tree spiders, and ground spiders. The spiders are exceedingly useful, and rid the country of many unpleasant flies. How many times I have seen them overpower prey which seemed much stronger than themselves.
"The web spiders seemed to have but a few enemies, but the house and wall spiders, which make no web, have most inveterate enemies in the shape of two or three kinds of wasps.
"During the day I have seen these wasps travel along the walls with a rapidity that astonished me, and, finally, when coming to a spider, immediately pounce upon the unfortunate insect and overpower it by the quickness of the movements of their legs, and succeed in cutting, one after the other, the legs of the spider close to the body, and then suck it, or fly away with it to devour it somewhere else.
"I consider some species of ants, snakes, lizards, and spiders as most useful; for they destroy a great quantity of insects and other vermin. The great moisture of the country I have visited, with its immense jungle, is well adapted for the insect world, and would prove a very rich field for a naturalist and collector.
"I was surprised to see how closely several of them mimicked or imitated other objects. Some looked exactly like the leaves on which they most generally remain; others are exactly of the color of the bark of trees on which they crawl; while others looked exactly like dead leaves, and one or two like pieces of dead branches of trees. Dragon flies of beautiful color were met near the pools.
"Bats are very abundant, and I had succeeded in making a fine collection of them. They sometimes came by hundreds and spent the whole of the night flying round a tree which bore fruits they liked, and the noise made by their wings sounded strangely amid the stillness which surrounded them.
"Squirrels are rather numerous, and there are a good number of species. Birds of prey and snakes are their great enemies.
"There are eight species of monkeys, but they are not all found in every district. They live in troops, but when old they live generally by themselves or in pairs.
"Of all the mammalian animals inhabiting the forest the monkey tribe is the most numerous; but the poor monkey is surrounded by enemies, the greatest being man, who sets traps everywhere to catch him. Then he is continually hunted by the negroes with guns or arrows. The guanonien, an eagle, is also his inveterate enemy.
"The guanonien is a most formidable eagle, and, in spite of all my endeavors, I have been unable to kill one. Several times I have been startled in the forest by a sudden cry of anguish from a monkey which had been seized by this 'leopard of the air,' as the natives often call it, and then have seen the bird with its prey disappear out of sight.