Renous speaks Spanish so well that the old lawyer mistook him for a Chilian.

Renous alluding to me, asked him what he thought of the King of England sending out a collector to their country, to pick up lizards and beetles, and to break stones?
The old gentleman thought seriously for some time, and then said, "It is not well,--hay un gato encerrado aqui (there is a cat shut up here).

No man is so rich as to send out people to pick up such rubbish.

I do not like it: if one of us were to go and do such things in England, do not you think the King of England would very soon send us out of his country ?" And this old gentleman, from his profession, belongs to the better informed and more intelligent classes! Renous himself, two or three years before, left in a house at San Fernando some caterpillars, under charge of a girl to feed, that they might turn into butterflies.

This was rumoured through the town, and at last the Padres and Governor consulted together, and agreed it must be some heresy.