one of his children died. At length he heard of a small coasting vessel going to Cayenne, so he embarked and got thereby another stage nearer the end of his journey. A short time after reaching Cayenne he shipped in a schooner that was going to Para, or rather the island of Marajo, for a cargo of cattle. He had now fixed himself, after all his wanderings, in a healthy and fertile little nook on the banks of a rivulet near Caripi, built himself a log hut, and planted a large patch of mandioca and Indian corn. He seemed to be quite happy, but his wife complained much of the want of wholesome food, meat and wheaten, bread. I asked the children whether they liked the country; they shook their heads and said they would rather be in Illinois. Petzell told me that his Indian neighbours treated him very kindly; one or other of them called almost every day to see how he was getting on, and they had helped him in many ways. He hada high opinion of the Tapuyos, and said, “If you treat them well, they will go through fire to serve you.” Petzell and his family were expert insect collectors, so I employed them at this work during my stay at Caripi. The daily occurrences here were after a uniform fashion. I rose with the dawn, took a cup of coffee, and then sallied forth after birds. At ten I breakfasted, and devoted the hours from ten until three to entomology. The evening was occupied in preserving and storing my captures. Petzell and I sometimes undertook long excursions, occupying the whole day. Our neighbours used to bring me all the quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and shells they met with, and so altogether I was enabled to acquire a good collection of the productions of the district.

The first few nights I was much troubled by bats. The room where I slept had not been used for many months, and the roof was open to the tiles and rafters. ‘The first night I slept soundly, and did not perceive anything unusual; but on the next I was aroused about midnight by the rushing noise made by vast hosts of bats sweeping about the room. ‘The air was alive with them; they had put out the lamp, and when I relighted it the place appeared blackened with the impish multitudes that were whirling round and round. After I had laid about well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared amongst the tiles, but when all was still again they returned, and once more extinguished the light. I took no further notice of them, and went to sleep. The next night several got into my hammock; I seized them as they were crawling over me, and dashed them against the wall. The next morning I found a wound, evidently caused by a bat, on my hip. This was rather unpleasant, so I set to work with the negroes, and tried to exterminate them. I shot a great many as they hung from the rafters, and the negroes having mounted with ladders to the roof outside, routed out from beneath the eaves many hundreds of them, including young broods. There were altogether four species—two belonging to the genus Dysopes, one to Phyllostoma, and the fourth to Glossophaga. By far the greater number belonged to the Dysopes perotis, a species having very large ears, and measuring two feet from tip to tip of the wings. The Phyllostoma was a small kind, of a dark-grey colour, streaked with white down the back, and having a leaf-shaped fleshy

expansion on the tip of the nose. I was never attacked by bats except on this occasion. The fact of their sucking the blood of persons sleeping, from wounds which they make in the toes, is now well established; but it is only a few persons who are subject to this blood-letting. According to the negroes, the Phyllostoma is the only kind which attacks man. Those which I caught crawling over me were Dysopes, and I am inclined to think many different kinds of bats have this propensity. One day I was occupied searching for insects in the bark of a fallen tree, when I saw a large cat-like animal advancing towards the spot. It came within a dozen yards before perceiving me. I had no weapon with me but an old chisel, and was getting ready to defend myself if it should make a spring, when it turned round hastily and trotted off. I did not obtain a very distinct view of it, but I could see its colour was that of the Puma, or American Lion, although it was much too small for that species. The Puma is not a common animal in the Amazons forests. I did not see altogether more than a dozen skins in the possession of the natives. The fur is of a fawn colour. On account of its hue resembling that of a deer common in the forests, the natives call it the Sassu-ardna,* or the false deer; that is, an animal which deceives one at first sight by its superficial resemblance to a deer. The hunters are not at all afraid of it, and speak always in disparaging terms of its courage. Of the Jaguar they give a very different account.

The only species of monkey I met with at Caripi was the same dark-coloured little Midas already mentioned as found near Parad. The great Ant-eater, Taamandua of the natives (Myrmecophaga jubata), was not uncommon here. After the first few weeks of residence I ran short of fresh provisions. ‘The people of the neighbourhood had sold me all the fowls they could spare; I had not yet learned to eat the stale and stringy salt-fish which is the staple food in these places, and for several days I had lived on rice-porridge, roasted bananas, and farinha. Florinda asked me whether I could eat Tamandua. I told her almost anything in the shape of flesh would be acceptable; so the same day she went with an old negro named Antonio and the dogs, and in the evening brought one of the animals. The meat was stewed, and turned out very good, something like goose in flavour. The people at Caripi would not touch a morsel, saying it was not considered fit to eat in these parts; I had read, however, that it was an article of food in other countries of South America. During the next two or three weeks, when we were short of fresh meat, Antonio was always ready, for a small reward, to get me a Tamandua. But one day he came to me in great distress, with the news that his favourite dog, Atrevido, had been caught in the grip of an ant-eater, and was killed. We hastened to the place, and found the dog was not dead, but severely torn by the claws of the animal, which itself was mortally wounded, and was now relaxing its grasp. The habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata are now pretty well known.

The old zoclogist Marcgrave called the Puma the Cuguacuarana, probably (the c’s being soft) a misspelling of SassG-arana;hence the name Cougouar employed by French zoologists, and copied in most works on natural history.

Ant-eater grappling with dog.

It is not uncommon in the drier forests of the Amazons valley, but is not found, I believe, in the Ygapo, or flooded lands. The Brazilians call the species the Tamandua bandeira, or the Banner Ant-eater, the term banner being applied in allusion to the curious coloration of the animal, each side of the body having a broad oblique stripe, half gray and half black, which gives it some resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an excessively long slender muzzle, and a wormlike extensile tongue. Its jaws are destitute of teeth. The claws are much elongated and its gait is very awkward. It lives on the ground, and feeds on termites, or white ants; the long claws being employed to pull in pieces the solid hillocks made by the insects, and the long flexible tongue to lick them up from the crevices. All the other species of this singular genus are arboreal. I met with four species altogether. One was the Myrmecophaga tetradactyla; the two others, more curious and less known, were very small kinds, called Tamandua-i. Both are similar in size—ten inches in length, exclusive of the tail—and in the number of claws, having two of unequal length to the anterior feet, and four to the hind feet. One species is clothed with grayish-yellow silky hair; this is of rare occurrence. The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour, without silky lustre. One was brought to me alive at Caripi, having been caught by an Indian, clinging motionless inside a hollow tree. I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours. It had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely small eyes. It remained nearly all the time without motion, except when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind legs from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day I put in on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small Tamanduds are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those species of termites which construct earthy nests, that look like ugly excrescences, on the trunks and branches of trees. The different kinds of ant-eaters are thus adapted to various modesof life, terrestrial and arboreal. Those which live on trees are again either diurnal or nocturnal, for Myrmecophaga tetradactyla is seen moving along the main branches in the daytime. The allied group of the Sloths, which are still more exclusively South American forms than ant-eaters are, at the present time furnish arboreal species only; but formerly terrestrial forms of sloths existed, as the Megatherium, whose mode of life was a puzzle, seeing that it was of too colossal.a size to live on trees, until Owen showed how it might have obtained its food from the ground.

In January the orange trees became covered with blossom-—at least to a greater extent than usual, for they flower more or less in this country all the year round—and the flowers attracted a great number of humming-birds. Every day, in the cooler hours of the morning, and in the evening from four o’clock till six, they were to be seen whirling about the trees by scores. ‘Their motions are unlike those of all other birds. They dart to and fro so swiftly that the eye can scarcely follow them, and when they stop before a flower it is only for a few moments.

They poise themselves in an unsteady manner, their wings moving with inconceivable rapidity; probe the flower, and then shoot off to another part of the tree. They do not proceed in that methodical manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from one part of the tree to another in the most capricious way. Sometimes two males close with each other and- fight, mounting upwards in the struggle, as insects are often seen to do when similarly engaged, and then separating hastily and darting back to their work. Now and then they stop to rest, perching on leafless twigs, where they may be sometimes seen probing, from the places where they sit, the flowers within their reach. The brilliant colours with which they are adorned cannot be seen whilst they are fluttering about, nor can the different species be distinguished unless they have a deal of white hue in their plumage, such as Heliothrix auritus, which is wholly white underneath, although of a glittering green

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