Juigalpa.—A Nicaraguan family.—Description of the road from Juigalpa to Santo Domingo.—Comparative scarcity of insects in Nicaragua in 1872.—Water-bearing plants.—Insect-traps.—The south-western edge of the forest region.—Influence of cultivation upon it.—Sagacity of the mule.
CHAPTER 11.
Start on journey to Segovia.—Rocky mountain road.—A poor lodging. —The rock of Cuapo.—The use of large beaks in some birds. —Comoapa.—A native doctor.—Vultures.—Flight of birds that soar. —Natives live from generation to generation on the same spot.—Do not give distinctive names to the rivers.—Caribs barter guns and iron pots for dogs.—The hairless dogs of tropical America. —Difference between artificial and natural selection.—The cause of sterility between allied species considered.—The disadvantages of a covering of hair to a domesticated animal in a tropical country.
CHAPTER 12.
Olama.—The "Sanate."—Muy-muy.—Idleness of the people.—Mountain road.—The "Bull Rock."—The bull's-horn thorn.—Ants kept as standing armies by some plants.—Use of honey-secreting glands. —Plant-lice, scale-insects, and leaf-hoppers furnish ants with honey, and in return are protected by the latter.—Contest between wasps and ants.—Waxy secretions of the homopterous hemiptera.
CHAPTER 13.
Matagalpa.—Aguardiente.—Fermented liquors of the Indians.—The wine-palm.—Idleness of the Nicaraguans.—Pine and oak forests. —Mountain gorge.—Jinotega.—Native plough.—Descendants of the buccaneers.—San Rafael.—A mountain hut.
CHAPTER 14.
Great range composed of boulder clay.—Daraily.—Lost on the savannahs.—Jamaily.—A deer-hunter's family.—Totagalpa.—Walls covered with cement and whitewashed.—Ocotal.—The valley of Depilto.—Silver mine.—Geology of the valley.—Glacial drift.—The glacial period in Central America.—Evidence that the ice extended to the tropics.—Scarcity of gold in the valley gravels. —Difference of the Mollusca on the east and west coast of the Isthmus of Darien.—The refuge of the tropical American animals and plants during the glacial period.—The lowering of the sea-level. —The land shells of the West Indian Islands.—The Malay Archipelago.—Easter Island.—Atlantis.—Traditions of the deluge.