A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



flame, glowed the splendid orange of the flowering Mulungu acacia. 

 There is a bird, moreover, frequently seen in the Sertao, which, 

 when it sits on a grey bough, looks like a flame. It is the Soffrer or 

 Concliz, magnificently clad in black and fiery orange : a starling 

 with a fine, powerful song, in whose first notes the Brazilians hear the 

 word soffrer (to suffer). 



Sand, and again sand ! The whole country looked like the bed 

 of a dried-up river, and I made my way along the winding depres- 

 sions in the sand, in which, of course, the water flowed in the rainy 

 season, for here I could walk at ease, whereas the bush was full of 

 thorns. But the burs of a yellowish-grey, rushlike grass with prickly 

 capsules — the Brazilians call it Carapicho — remained hanging to 

 my clothes in hundreds, and if I tried to remove them the fine hairs 

 ran into my skin. Caution is always admirable in tropical countries, 

 and especially in the dry areas, where those plants which endeavour 

 to retain their leaves in the rainless months protect them against 

 grazing animals by means of thorns, prickles and stinging hairs. 

 Once, when I was standing before a tree, and about to pluck one 

 of its rare, sharply-serrated leaves, the mulatto pulled me back in 

 time, telling me that if one touched such a leaf one's hand would 

 burn for days, and indeed inflammation and fever would result. 

 The tree was a Euphorbia, the Favelleira or "Vulture-nettle tree," 

 Urtiga do urubu (Plate 21). 



In tropical America there is yet another poisonous Euphorbia, 

 which plays a part in Meyerbeer's UAfricaine. In this opera the 

 queen of the tropical island lies down beneath the tree to die as her 

 lover, Vasco de Gama, sails homewards. Even though the poisonous 

 vapours exhaled by the tree do not kill, they are none the less in- 

 jurious, as recent researches have shown. And from time immemorial 

 the Indians of Brazil have prepared their well-known arrow poison 

 from various native plants. 



In the Sertao we find many trees already familiar, but more 

 gnarled and of lesser growth than in the moist belt. From the Juca 

 hang great beans, like our broad beans in appearance, and swollen 

 ridges covered with woody thorns run up the trunk of the Angico. 

 The Brauna yields a very tough wood. The leaves of the Joazeiro will 

 stand any degree of drought ; one is always glad to see its vigorous 

 green crown. But the handsomest tree of the Sertao is the Oiticica 

 (Plate 21). A sturdy trunk, dividing into many branches, lifts itself 

 from roots which run high over the ground. From the dense green 

 roof of foliage the older leaves hang like silver tassels. It is cool in 

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