LIFE IN TEFFE. 223 
Our household is now established on a permanent basis. 
We had at first some difficulty in finding servants ; at this 
fishing season, when the men are going off to dry and salt 
fish, and when the season for hunting turtle-eggs and 
making turtle-butter is coming on, the town is almost 
deserted by the men. It is like haying-time in the coun- 
try, when every arm is needed in the fields. Then the 
habits of the Indians are so irregular, and they care so 
little for money, finding, as they do, the means of living 
almost without work immediately about them, that even 
if one does engage a servant, he is likely to disappear 
the next day. An Indian will do more for good-will and 
a glass of cachaca (rum) than he will do for wages, which 
are valueless to him. The individual, who has been sup- 
plying the place of indoors man while we have been looking 
for a servant, is so original in his appearance that he 
deserves a special description. He belongs to a neighbor 
who has undertaken to provide our meals, and he brings 
them when they are prepared and waits on the table. 
He is rather an elderly Indian, and his dress consists of 
a pair of cotton drawers, originally white, but now of 
many hues and usually rolled up to the knees, his feet 
being bare ; the upper part of his person is partially 
medulla oblongata. This region of the central nervous system is strangely 
developed in different families of fishes, and sends out nerves performing very 
varied functions. From it arise, normally, the nerves of movement and sensa- 
tion about the face ; it also provides the organs of breathing, the upper part 
of the alimentary canal, the throat and the stomach. In the electric fishes the 
great nerves entering the electric battery arise from the same cerebral region, 
and now I have found that the pouch in which the egg of the Acara is in- 
cubated and its young nursed for a time, receives its nerves from the same 
source. This series of facts is truly wonderful, and only shows how far our 
science still is from an apprehension of the functions of the nervous sys- 
tem. L. A. 
