WCP731

[1]

Broadstone, Wimborne

March 13th. 1905

My dear Fred¹

I was very glad to get yours of Feb. 24th. last week, & to hear nothing more of your swollen lip which I was afraid might have laid you up for a month as it did me. Your account of the scarcity of insects in the dry season is most amazing to me, and shows how comparitively [sic] slight changes of climatic conditions affect life, especially insect life. But all my experiences of good beetle collecting was in the East, but you have no doubt read all that Bates² wrote about his Amazon collecting. I know in some letters to me he gave some numbers of species & specimens collected [MS burned] a good day, and [MS burned] [2] were a little higher than my best. But I do not remember his saying anything about the richness of fallen trees, & they may not be so good as in the East. With me ^{in Borneo &c.} Lamiidae were much more abundant (in species) than Cerambycidae, whereas on the Amazon the reverse was the case. Now the former are preeminently wood-gnawers — the latter flower & leaf harvesters, & that may make a great difference in the two countries. Still as H.H.Smith³ specially mentioned the rich collecting among the fallen trees &c. at Santarem, and the Brazil Engineer the same among old rails & new-cleared forest in Central Brazil, the absence of any in Trinidad is really [MS burned] <incomprehensible>.

[3] The two places you think of going to seem both highly promising.

Guanipa, on my map is a river just to the north of the Delta, its mouth being in the mouth of the most N. E. entrance to the Orinooko [sic]. You would have there the same fauna as at the great-pitch lake at Guanoco, but a mangrove swamp sounds horrid. They usually swarm with mosquitos and are impassable without a plank path to the dry land. The important thing is how near is the dry land & the villages of the Indians, have they plantations, is there wood-cutting &c.

Santa Catalina seems more promising as you would be there in the extreme N. of the Guayana district, and only 80 miles from El Callao. It seems to be on a ^side branch of the main river, with a range of hills midway between the ^{two places.}

You don’t say what the [MS burned] [4] are doing. Are they planting or timber cutting or what? I think it would be advisable for you to go for a month or two to both places, as you would probably find them more distinct in species than usual for only 100 miles apart, as the one is Venezuelan the other in the Guayanan subregion. If at all suitable for comfort, paths, food, natives &c. you could hardly have two more interesting localities ^{so near.}

At all events you might begin collecting everything there — birds, mammals (small) land & fresh water, shells, as well as insects of all orders. Of course they are not remote enough to have a large proportion of new species, but still you ought to [MS burned] at both, a good sample of Continental S. America.. I long to hear [MS burned] experiences there.

[MS burned] Alfred R.Wallace — [signature]