The Naturalist on the River Amazons

I made, in this second visit to Villa Nova, an extensive collection of the natural productions of the neighbourhood. A fewremarks on some of the more interesting of these must suffice. The forests are very different in their general character from those of Parad, and in fact

those of humid districts generally throughout the Amazons. The same scarcity of large-leaved Musaceous and Marantaceous plants was noticeable here as at Obydos. ~The low-lying areas of forest or Ygapés, which alternate everywhere with the more elevated districts, did not furnish the same luxuriant ~ fi vegetation as they do in the i: PD | Delta region of the Amazons. [7a luli ~ They are flooded during three 7 via: ag a or four months in the year, and when the waters retire, the ] soil—to which the very thin WSa, coating of alluvial deposit imparts little fertility—remains bare, or covered with a matted bed of dead leaves, until the next flood season. ‘These tracts have then a barren appearance; the trunks and lower branches of the trees are coated with dried slime, and disfigured by rounded masses of freshwater sponges, whose long horny spiculze and dingy colours give them the appearance of hedgehogs. Dense bushes of a harsh, cutting grass, called Tiririca, form almost the only fresh vegetation in the dry season. Perhaps the dense shade, the long period during which the land remains under water, and the excessively rapid desiccation when the waters retire, all contribute to the barrenness of these Ygapds. The higher and drier land is everywhere sandy, and tall coarse grasses line the borders of the broad alleys which have been cut through the second-growth woods. These places swarm with carapatos, ugly ticks belonging to the genus Ixodes, which mount to the tips of blades of grass, and attach themselves to the clothes of passers-by. They are a great annoyance. It occupied me a full hour daily to pick them off my flesh after my diurnal ramble. There are two species; both are much flattened in shape, have four pairs of legs, a thick short

Peuririma Palm (Bactris). proboscis anda horny integument. Their habit is to attach themselves to the skin by plunging their proboscides into it, and then suck the blood until their flat bodies are distended into a globular form. The whole proceeding, however, is very slow, and it takes them several days to pump their fill. No pain or itching is felt, but serious sores are caused if care is not taken in removing them, as the proboscis is

liable to break off and remain in the wound. A little tobacco juice is generally applied to make them loosen their hold. They do not cling firmly to the skin by their legs, although each of these has a pair of sharp and fine claws, connected with the tips of the member by means of a flexible pedicle. When they mount to the summits of slender blades of grass, or the tips of leaves, they hold on by their fore-legs only, the other three pairs being stretched out so as to fasten on any animal which comes in their way. The smaller of the two species is of a yellowish colour; it is much the most abundant, and sometimes falls upon one by scores. When distended, it is about the size of a No. 8 shot; the larger kind, which fortunately comes only singly to the work, swells to the size ofa pea.

In some parts of the interior the soil is composed of very coarse sand and small angular fragments of quartz; in these places no trees grow. I visited, in company with Padre Torquato, one of these treeless spaces or campos, as they are called, situated five miles from the village. The road thither led through a varied and beautiful forest, containing many gigantic trees. I missed the Assai, Miriti, Paxitiba, and other palms which are all found only on rich moist soils; but the noble Bacdba was not uncommon, and there was a great diversity of dwarf species of Maraja palms (Bactris), one of which, called the Peuririma, was very elegant, growing to a height of twelve or fifteen feet, with a stem no thicker than a man’s finger. On arriving at the campo all this beautiful forest abruptly ceased, and we saw before us an oval tract of land, three or four miles in circumference, destitute even of the smallest bush. The only vegetation was a crop of coarse hairy grass growing in patches. The forest formed a hedge all round the isolated field, and its borders were composed in great part of trees which do not grow in the dense virgin forest, such as a great variety of bushy Melastomas, low Byrsomina trees, myrtles, and Lacre trees, whose berries exude globules of wax resembling gamboge. On the margins of the campo wild pine-apples also grew in great quantity. The fruit was of the same shape as our cultivated kind, but much smaller, the size being that of a moderately large apple. We gathered several quite ripe; they were pleasant to the taste, of the true pineapple flavour, but had an abundance of fully developed seeds, and only a small quantity of eatable pulp. There was no path beyond this campo; in fact, all beyond is terra incognita to the inhabitants of Villa Nova. The only interesting Mammalian animal which I saw at Villa Nova was a monkey of a species new to me: it was not, however, a native of the district, having been brought by a trader from the river Madeira, a few miles above Borba. It was a howler, probably the Mycetes stramineus of Geoffroy St. Hilaire. The howlers are the only kinds of monkey which the natives have not succeeded in taming. They are often caught, but they do not survive captivity many weeks. The one of which I am speaking was not quite full grown. It measured sixteen inches in length, exclusive of the tail; the whole body was covered with rather long and shining dingy-white hair, the whiskers and beard only being of a tawny hue. It was kept in a house, together with a

Coaita and a Caiardra monkey (Cebus albifrons). Both these lively members of the monkey order seemed rather to court attention, but the Mycetes slunk away when any one approached it. When it first arrived, it occasionally made a gruff subdued howling noise early in the morning. The deep volume of sound in the voice of the howling monkeys, as is well known, is produced by a drum-shaped expansion of the larynx. It was curious to watch the animal whilst venting its hollow cavernous roar, and observe how small was the muscular exertion employed. When howlers are seen in the forest, there are generally three or four of them mounted on the topmost branches of a tree. It does not appear that their harrowing roar is emitted from sudden alarm; at least, it was not so in captive individuals. It is probable, however, that the noise serves to intimidate their enemies. I did not meet with the Mycetes stramineus in any other part of the Amazons region; in the neighbourhood of Parad a reddish-coloured species prevails (M. Belzebuth); in the narrow channels near Breves I shot a large, entirely black kind; another yellow-handed species, according to the report of the natives, inhabits the island of Macajd, which is probably the M. flavimanus of Kuhl; some distance up the Tapajos the only howler found is a brownish-black species; and on the Upper Amazons the sole species seen was the Mycetes ursinus, whose fur is of a shining yellowish-red colour.

In the dry forests of Villa Nova I saw a rattlesnake for the first time. I was returning home one day through a narrow alley, when I heard a pattering noise close to me. Hard by was a tall palm tree, whose head was heavily weighted with parasitic plants, and I thought the noise was a warning that it was about to fall. The wind lulled fora few moments, and then there was no doubt that the noise proceeded from the ground. On turning my head in that direction, a sudden plunge startled me, and a heavy gliding motion betrayed a large serpent making off almost from beneath my feet. The ground is always so encumbered with rotting leaves and branches, that one only discovers snakes when they are in the act of moving away. The residents of Villa Nova would not believe that I had seen a rattlesnake in the neighbourhood; in fact, it is not known to occur in the forests at all, its place being the open campos, where, near Santarem, I killed several. On my second visit to Villa Nova I saw another. I had then a favourite little dog, named Diamante, who used to accompany me in my rambles. One day he rushed into the thicket, and made a dead set at a large snake, whose head I saw raised above the herbage. The foolish little brute approached quite close, and then the serpent reared its tail slightly in a horizontal position and shook its terrible rattle. It was many minutes before I could get the dog away; and this incident, as well as the one already related, shows how slow the reptile is to make the fatal spring.

I was much annoyed, and at the same time amused, with the Urubu vultures. The Portuguese call them corvos or crows; in colour and general appearance they somewhat resemble rooks, but they are much larger, and have naked, black, wrinkled skin about their face and throat. They assemble in great numbers in the villages about the end of the wet season, and are then ravenous with hunger. My cook could

not leave the open kitchen at the back of the house for a moment, whilst the dinner was cooking, on account of their thievish propensities. Some of them were always loitering about, watching their opportunity, and the instant the kitchen was left unguarded, the bold marauders marched in and lifted the lids of the saucepans with their beaks to rob them of their contents. The boys of the village lie in wait, and shoot them with bow and arrow; and vultures have consequently acquired such a dread of these weapons, that they may be often kept off by hanging a bow from the rafters of the kitchen. As the dry season advances, the hosts of Urubus follow the fishermen to the lakes, where they gorge themselves with the offal of the fisheries. Towards February they return to the villages, and are then not nearly so ravenous as before their summer trips. The insects of Villa Nova are, to a great extent, the same as those of Santarem and the Tapajos. A few species of all orders, however, are found here, which occurred nowhere else on the Amazons, besides several others which are properly considered local varieties or races of others found at Para, on the northern shore of the Amazons, or in other parts of Tropical America. The Hymenoptera were especially numerous, as they always are in districts which possess a sandy soil: but the many interesting facts which I gleaned relative to their habits will be more conveniently introduced wher. I treat of the same or similar species found in the localities above named.

One of the most conspicuous insects peculiar to Villa Nova is an exceedingly handsome butterfly, which has been named Agrias Phalcidon. It is of large size, and the colours of the upper surface of its wings resemble those of the Callithea Leprieurii, already described, namely, dark blue, with a broad silvery-green border... When it settles on leaves of trees, fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, it closes its wings and then exhibits a row of brilliant pale-blue eye-like spots with white pupils, which adorns their under surface. Its flight is exceedingly swift, but when at rest it is not easily made to budge from its place; or if driven off, returns soon after to the same spot. Its superficial resemblance to Callithea Leprieurii, which is a very abundant species in the same locality, is very close. The likeness might be considered a mere accidental coincidence, especially as it refers chiefly to the upper surface of the wings, if similar parallel resemblances did not occur between other species of the same two genera. Thus, on the Upper Amazons, another totally distinct kind of Agrias mimics still more closely another Callithea; both insects being peculiar to the district where they are found flying together. Resemblances of this nature are very numerous in the insect world. I was much struck with them in the course of my travels, especially when, on removing from one district to another, local varieties of certain species were found accompanied by local varieties of the species which counterfeited them in the former locality, under a dress changed to correspond with the altered liveries of the species they mimicked. One cannot help concluding these imitations to be intentional, and that nature has some motive in their production. In many cases, the reason of the imitation is sufficiently plain. For instance, when a fly or parasitic bee has a