An Earthly Paradise.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5271, 30 May 1895, Page 2

An Earthly Paradise.

A Bomewhat interesting scientific expedition was recently undertaken by Dr Eiepn, member of the Academy of Scieaoea in San Franoisco, and the naturalist, Mr Frank Baslit. They made a journey to Southern California and the interior of Mexico, and their observations and discoveries teem to be of importance. They declare Southern California to be "an earthly Paradise," but that enthusiastic generalisation is rather discounted when they proceed to give minute details of the noxious aud troublesome creatures that abound there. In the course of their travels, they collected, it is Baid, forty tbounand insects of all kinds, among which were three thousand new Bpeoies. Staying ia Southern California for One month, they discovered sixty new speqies of -beetles, On a journey to La Paz they discovered new mountains, two peaks more than five thousand feet high, one of which they nam^d Mount Molera and the other Troyer Peak, after members of the San Francisco Academy. In the Tepee moontains they found, strange animals/among them being a scorpion one inch long, whose 8- ing was deadly if not at cnoe treated with antidotes. Thie scorpion is galled " alacran," and the natives say that once about sixty soldiers who camped near a colony of the creatures were attacked by them, and not a single man eeoiped death. Another nasty creature is a minute inseot, thin enough to creep through a needle's eye, whose bite causes great swellings. Spiders more than two inches long, with hairy feet, were the destroyers of butterflies and other insects/ They weave nets from one tree to another, catching thousands of insects. After reading this catalogue of insect peats, the conclusion isinevitable that Southern California is not a perfect Eden— that it is a very ♦' earthly** Paradise indeed.