BOOKS.

MOUNTAINEERING AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE ANDES OF SOUTH AMERICA.* THE qualifications for a traveller who desires to accomplish really useful scientific work in little-explored countries are many and various. He is expected to take geographical, meteorological, and geological observations of all kinds; to make collections in every branch of natural history ; and to study the habits, customs, superstitions, and dialects of the in- habitants. But no man can accomplish everything; and when Mr. Whymper decided on an expedition to Ecuador, he set before himself as his principal objects a practical investigation of the causes and nature of mountain-sickness, which have been much disputed ; "the determination of the altitudes and of the relative positions of the chief mountains of Ecuador, the comparison of boiling-point observations, and of aneroids against the mercurial barometer; and collecting in botany and zoology at great heights." Mr. Whymper adds : "I concerned myself neither with commerce nor politics, nor with the natives and their curious ways ; " but nevertheless, much incidental information on these subjects will be found scattered through his pages.

The results of such a journey, undertaken by a traveller so well fitted for the task as Mr. Whymper, could hardly fail to be highly valuable. A trained mountaineer, already inured to travel in some of the most desolate and difficult regions of the known world, a good draughtsman and photographer, well skilled in the use of meteorological instruments, and a most diligent collector, he brought to the work a variety of accom- plishments rarely united in the person of one man. It had been his first intention to have explored the Himalayas ; but political obstacles compelled him to fall back upon Ecuador, as containing the loftiest mountains practically accessible at the time.

After some years spent in plans and preparations, Mr.

Whymper arrived at Guayaquil in December, 1879, accom- panied by two experienced Swiss guides; and as soon as the necessary arrangements could be completed, set out for Chimborazo, having engaged the services of a tesident Eng- lishman, Mr. Perring, as interpreter. We cannot attempt to follow the details of the various ascents of Chimborazo, and other peaks nearly as lofty. Suffice it to say, that on their first ascent of Chimborazo, the whole party, with the sole exception of Mr. Perring, were suddenly attacked by mountain-sickness in camp at an elevation of upwards of 16,000 ft., and suffered severely for three or four days. Afterwards they appear to have become acclimatised, and to have experienced nothing worse than lassitude and diminution of strength and energy at the highest levels existing in Ecuador during the remainder of their stay in the country. Upon their recovery, they successfully accomplished the ascent of the mountain, but were soon afterwards compelled to return to lower ground, in consequence of one of the guides getting his feet severely frostbitten. Just before finally quitting the coun- try, the party reascended the mountain, and had the satisfaction of witnessing an eruption of ashes from the great volcano of Cotopaxi, more than sixty miles away, which drifted in the direction of Chimborazo, and soon darkened the whole scene, and covered everything with impalpable dust.

The exploration of the mountains of Ecuador is attended

with the usual dangers and difficulties of mountain travelling (including frost-bite, mountain-sickness, and snow-blindness) ; and huge glaciers were discovered on all the higher mountains, with danerons crevasses and bergschrunds, as in the Swiss Alps. In some places, huge icicles a hundred and fifty feet long overhung unfathomable precipices ; and the weather in the higher Andes seems to be one long succession of mist, rain, snow, bail, and thunder, very rarely permitting more than a portion of the vast panorama to be observed at one time. But notwithstanding the unusual difficulties and dangers of the Andes, the courage and experience of the mountaineers appear to have vanquished every summit which they attempted, except in one or two instances where the peak was crowned with a mushroom-like cap of overhanging glazier, which rendered any assault impossible. Several of the mountains ascended or observed are hardly to be found in • (L) Travels amongst the Great Andes of the Equator.—(2) Supplementary Appendix.—(&) How to Use the Aneroid Barometer. By Edward Whymper. 8 TOIL London : John Murray. 1892.

our maps ; and careful observations were taken at every important station, both with the mercurial and aneroid baro- meters.* Many of the statements of earlier explorers, even of men like Humboldt and Boussingault, appear to be greatly in need of revision,—partly, perhaps, from want of practical experience in mountaineering, and partly from defective instruments or observations.

After the ascent of Chimborazo, the highest mountain in Ecuador, the altitude of which Mr. Whymper esti a 20,545 ft., the account of Cotopaxi, the highest known active volcano in the world (19,613 ft.), where the travellers encamped for a night on the very lip of the vast crater, from which great jets of steam were bursting forth at frequent intervals, will perhaps be found most interesting among the minor ascents. One of the numerous illustrations represents Mr. Whymper himself peering down into the steam-filled crater. But we must pass on now to consider the results of the journey from other points of view. Collecting was only attempted systemati- cally at high levels to which travellers rarely penetrate, and where but little is to be met with, compared with the teeming exuberance of animal and vegetable life on lower ground. Of the latter, a faint idea may be gathered from the plate oppo- site p. 391, whereon are depicted a "few selections" from the collection formed by the author in his bedroom at Guayaquil, many specimens, however, being omitted, partly from sheer want of room, and partly from being too large, or too small and inconspicuous, to represent. Thirty-five insects, &c., have been crowded into the plate, representing bees, wasps, beetles, cockroaches, bugs, flies, scorpions, spiders, &c. The largest insects (beetles and cockroaches at least two inches long) are not the most formidable ; but apart from the scorpion, which is too small to do much harm, the most objectionable is perhaps the great wheel-bug represented near the top left-hand corner of the plate, which much resembles the huge black bloodsucking bug of Chili, described by Darwin and others, and which actually belongs to the same genus.

On the higher levels, however, though individual species were abundant, the actual number represented was very small. Mr. Whymper does not appear to have made any attempt to collect mammalian birds, nor does he seem to have been provided with firearms, for which, indeed, there was but little occasion, though now and then a bear, a wild bull, or the track of a puma was sighted. Specimens of rocks, &c., were obtained from the lofty mountains ascended, and were submitted to Professor T. G. Bonney for examination. His reports are published partly in notes to the principal volume, and partly in the Supplementary Appendix. The plants collected are referred to in notes ; but the collection of insects obtained, amounting to about a thousand species, of which 359 have been positively determined, are discussed in the Appendix. Of these 359, 131 are described as new to science, and many are figured; 14 being regarded as the types of new genera. As these naturally belong to comparatively well-known groups, it is almost certain that if the remainder of the collection was worked out, the proportion of new species would be found to be very much larger. The few species of reptiles, amphibia, fishes, and crustac,ea, obtained are likewise discussed in the Supplementary Appendix.

The Appendix, in which the separate articles have been written by well-known specialists, commences with a short introduction by Mr. H. W. Bates, the late Secretary of the Geographical Society, whose recent death is felt as a general calamity by all naturalists and travellers. He considered that Mr. Whymper's collections afford no ground for the theory that there was a migration of insects along the Andes from north to south during the last glacial period, and sug- gests various explanations, as the probability of a break in the continuity of the chain near the Isthmus of Panama, or that the Andes were lower at that time, or that the tropical fauna may have extended too high to give the immigrants from the north a chance of forcing their way through. Still, it might be pointed out that there are some few instances in which a species appears to have traversed the chain of the Andes from north to south,—as, for example, Pyrameis carye, a butterfly allied to our common British Painted Lady, which is met with in Western America from California and Chili, and which Mr. Whymper obtained in Ecuador at elevations of 8,500 ft. and 9,800 ft.

• We have not seen the third part of Mr. Whymper's work, detailing the results of his work with aneroids more fully than in the larger volume.

Mr. Whymper likewise formed collections of ancient stone implements and pottery, much of the latter, however, being destroyed brone of his mules falling over a precipice on the way to Quito. Nor did he neglect to photograph some of the remarkable characters he encountered on his journey, nor even to collect specimens of modern Indian workmanship, such as earrings and other ornaments, and hand-made lace of ele! • patterns. His work gives a more favourable impres- sion of the Indians than of that part of the population of European or semi-European origin, though it seems to have been only on -comparatively rare occasions that he met with extortion or incivility. But the accommodation for travellers was often of the scantiest, that of the tambos usually con.. dating only of a room, without a scrap of furniture, but

swarming with fleas ; while little or nothing was attainable in the neighbourhood at any price for the food of man or beast.. Itis plain from Mr. Whymper's observations, that commercial dishonesty, political intrigue, and consequent universal dis- trust, will long form a barrier to any real progress in this

country of unlimited natural resources.

Little is said of the ideas of the inhabitants, except that wherever Mr. Whymper went, he was supposed to be in search of hidden treasure. He speaks, however, of the reverence felt by Indians for the crucifix, and at p.156 figures a rude wooden Indian crucifix, curiously like some of the old wayside crosses still to be seen in out-of-the-way country places in Europe..

The Indian pattern doubtless dates from the time of the Spanish conquest.

It must not be supposed from what we have said that Mr. Whymper's book is severely scientific. There is much of interest which our space compels us to leave unnoticed; and we have hardly mentioned the numerous excellent illustra- tions of scenery, objects of natural history, &c. The author. writes an easy, amusing style, and his pages are enlivened by many anecdotes of the minor incidents of the journey. But we prefer to close our notice with an extract from the descrip- tion of Cotopaxi by night, to which we have already alluded:—

" We saw an amphitheatre 2,300 ft. in diameter from north to. south, and 1,650 ft. across from east to west, with a rugged and irregular crest, notched and cracked, surrounded by cliffs, by per- pendicular and even overhanging precipices, mixed with steep slopes—some bearing snow, and others apparently encrusted with sulphur. Cavernous recesses belched forth smoke ; the sides of cracks and chasms no more than half-way down shone with ruddy light ; and so it continued on all sides, right down to the bottom, precipice alternating with slope, and the fiery fissures becoming more numerous as the bottom was approached. At the bottom, probably twelve hundred feet below us, and towards the centre, there was a rudely circular spot, about one-tenth of the diameter of the crater; the pipe of the volcano ; its channel of communication with lower regions, filled with incandescent if not molten lava, glowing and burning ; with flames travelling to and fro over its surface, and scintillations scattering as from a wood fire ; lighted by tongues of flickering flame which issued from the cracks in the surrounding elopes.'