ANNOTATED LIST OF THE SPECIES 345 
regulations concerning the marketing of dried fish. The bales of paiche-veneer, 
tied with hanas or strips of bark, were piled on the ground, or on the decks of the 
launches, with no more care than so many hides. The Brazilians, however, were 
obliged by law or custom to wrap their bundles in banana leaf or some such cover 
enroute to market. (Fig. 41.) 
Beebe, through Mr. White, his principal informant, and an excellent observer, 
asserts that the ““warapaima”’ prefers the deeper holes of a stream-bed for its hiding- 
place. 
I was shown nipple-like outgrowths about the head which the people believed to 
be found on the female alone, and which were supposed to be in the nature of mam- 
mary glands. It is more probable that they belong to the male than the female 
and might be a holdfast. 
The species has certain other points of usefulness than as an article of food. 
In the early day, before the advent of kerosene in its five-gallon tin, and in the hey- 
day of the fish, its oil was employed as an illuminant, along with that of the turtle 
egg. Here in this broad land of alluvial character, a land without mineral resources, 
the aboriginal tribes exhibit to this day certain cultural aspects older than the stone 
age, as, for example, the expedients by which they make up for the want of mineral 
materials for the arts and crafts. (This is mentioned under the account of the 
piranha.) The paiche’s toothed tongue and other bones of the mouth serve as a 
rasp for wood, and as a grater for the cassava root in the preparation of farinha. 
Order MICROCYPRINI 
Family XVIII: Poeciltidae 
Subfamily: FUNDULINAE 
Genus 194: RIVULUS Poey 
Rivulus Poey, 1858, Mem. Hist. Nat. Cuba, 307, 383; 
Eigenmann and Eigenmann, 1891, Proc. U. 8. Nat. Mus., XIV, 64; 
Eigenmann, 1910, Rept. Princeton Univ. Exped. Patagonia, III, 454; 
Eigenmann, 1912, Mem. Carnegie Mus., V, 452; 
Eigenmann, 1922, Mem. Carnegie Mus., IX, 183; 
Myers, 1927, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., (9), XIX, 119; 
Myers, 1931, Stanford Univ. Publ. Biol. Sci., VI, 10. 
Type: Rivulus cylindraceus Poey 
United States southward to Paraguay 
All fins rounded except for notched caudals of males of some species; head 
wider than deep; dorsal farther back than anal, and smaller; females more brightly 
colored than males; sexual dimorphism very pronounced. 
The area which we have under consideration lies upon the southern or south- 
eastern fringe of the range of the family, where it is represented by few genera. 
Partly due to this fact, and partly due to the inundated stages of small streams, our 
collections of the lowland Poeciliids were scanty. Yet from the reports on other 
collections in the area, the same statement could be made for all. 
