54 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



" Tame Animals Among the Red Men of America," by Dr. 

 E. F. im Thurn,* in which it is stated that the Indian of South 

 America finds means to tame almost every wild bird and beast of 

 his country, so that these domesticated animals are ever among 

 the most prominent members of his household, not because of 

 any affection for them, but because he enjoys their bright colors, 

 makes use of them in various ways, and employs them as a me- 

 dium of exchange. They even know how to change the colors 

 of a living bird from green to yellow. In one settlement he 

 counted twenty-one kinds of monkeys. Nearly all of the thirty 

 or more species of Guiana parrots are tamed, two species of 

 deer, two of peccaries, two of coati-mundis, jaguars, pacas, 

 capybaras, agoutis, hawks, owls, herons, plovers, toucans, troup- 

 ials, rupicolas, and iguanas were also observed in captivity. The 

 mere fact that these animals are kept in captivity is not in itself 

 especially significant, but it renders it possible to understand how 

 the splendor-loving rulers of Mexico succeeded in building up 

 their great menageries. 



Bearing in mind the animal myths which Major Powell has 

 found so prevalent among the Indians of Arizona and New Mexico, 

 and has so charmingly translated, and those which Schoolcraft 

 and others recorded in the north long ago, and which Longfellow 

 has arranged in metric form, we cannot but be impressed with 

 the idea that the red man of old, living close to nature as he did, 

 knew many of her secrets which we should be glad to share with 

 him at the present day. 



Garcilasso de la Vega was not the only descendant of the aborig- 

 inal Americans who has written upon their history. Among the 

 authors of works upon Mexican archaeology published in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were Taddeo de Niza and 

 Gabriel d'Ayala, " noble Indians " of Tlazcala and Tezcuco, the 



*Timehri, being the Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial 

 Society of British Guiana. Demerara, vol. i, 1S82, pp. 25-43. 



