THE NATURALIST ON THE RIVER AMAZONS 



669 



: a small reward, to get me aTamandua. But 

 one day he came tome in great distress, with 

 the news that his favorite dog, Atrevido, had 

 been caught in the grip of an ant-eater, and 

 Tvas kilkd. We hastened to the place, and 

 found the dog was not di;ad, but severely torn 

 by the claws of the animal, which itself was 

 mortally wounded, and was now relaxing its 

 grasp. 

 The habits of the Myrmecophaga jubata 



; ate now pretty well known. It is not un- 

 common in the drier forests of the Amazons 

 v;illey, but is not found, I believe, in the 

 Ygapo, or flooded lands. The Brazilians 

 call the species the Tainandua bandeira, or 

 the Banner Ant-eater, the term banner being 

 applied in allusion to the curious coloration 

 of the animal, each side of the body having a 

 broad oblique stripe, half gray and half 

 black, which gives it some resemblance to a 

 heraldic banner. It has an excessively long 



; slender muzzle, and a wormlike extensile 

 tongue. Its jaws are destitute of teeth. 

 The claws are much elongated, and its gait 

 is very awkward. It lives on the ground, 



; and feeds on termites, or white ants, the 

 Joiig claws being employed to pull in pieces 

 the solid hillocks made by the insects, and 

 the long flexible tongue to lick them up from 

 Ihe crevices All the other species of this 

 singular genus are arboreal. I met with four 

 epccies altogether. One was the Myrmeco- 

 phaga tetradactyla ; the two others, more 



curious and less known, were very small 

 kinds, called Tamandua-i. Both are similar 



.111 size ten inches in length, exclusive of the 

 tail and in the number of the claws, having 

 two of unequal length to the anterior feet, 

 and four to the hind feet. One species is 

 clothed with grayish-yellow silky hair ; this 

 is of rare occurrence. The other has a fur 

 of a dingy brown color, without silky lustre. 

 One was brought to me alive at Caripi, hav- 

 ing been caught by an Indian, clinging mo- 

 tionless inside a hollow tree. I kept it in the 

 house about twenty-four hours. It had a 

 moderately long snout, curved downward, 

 and extremely small eyes. It remained 

 nearly all the'time without motion, except 

 when irritated, in which case it reared itself 

 on its hind legs from the back of a chair to 

 which it dung, and clawed out with its fore- 

 paws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with 

 i's claws, and the sluggishness of its motions, 

 give it a great resemblance to a sloth. It ut- 

 tered no souni.l, and remained all night on 

 tlie spot where I had placed it in the morn- 

 ing. The next day I put it on a tree in the 

 open nir, and at ni^ht it escaped. These 

 pinall Tamanduas are nocturnal in their 

 habits, and feed on those species of termites 

 which construct earthy nests, that look like 

 ugly excrescences, on the trunks and branches 

 of trees. The different kinds of ant-eaters 

 are thus adapted to various modes of life, ter- 

 restrial and arboreal. Those which live on 

 trees are again either diurnal or nocturnal, 

 for Myrmecophaga tetradactyla are seen mr>/- 

 iug along the main branches in the dtiytim". 

 The allied group of the Sloths, which are 



still more exclusively South American forms 

 than ant-eaters are, at the present time fur- 

 nish arboreal species only, but formerly ter- 

 restrial forms of sloths also existed, a*s the 

 Megatherium, whose mode of life was a 

 puzzle, seeing that it was of too colossal a 

 size to live on trees, until Owen showed how 

 it might have obtained its food from the 

 ground. 



In January the orange trees became cov 

 ered with blossom at least to a greater ex- 

 tent than usual, for they flower more or loss 

 in the country all the year round and the 

 flowers attracted a great number of hum- 

 ming-birds. Every day in the cooler hours 

 of the morning, and in the evening from 

 four o'clock till six, they were to be seen 

 whirling about the trees by scores. Their 

 motions are unlike those of all other birds. 

 They dart to and fro so swiftly that the eye 

 can scarcely follow them, and when they 

 stop before a flower it is only for a few mo- . 

 meuts. They poise themselvts in an un- 

 steady manner, their wings moving with in- 

 conceivable rapidity, probe the fbwer, and 

 then shoot off to another part of the tree. 

 They do not proceed in that methodical man- 

 ner which bees follow, taking the flowers 

 spriatim, but skip about from one part of 

 the tree to another in the most capricious 

 way. Sometimes two males close with each 

 other and fight, mounting upward in the 

 struggle, as insects do when similarly en- 

 gaged, and then separating hastily and dart 

 ing back to their work. Now and then the} 

 stop to rest, perching on leafless twigs, where 

 they may be sometimes seen probing, from 

 the places where they sit, the flowers within 

 their reach. The brilliant colors with which 

 they are adorned cannot be seen while they 

 are fluttering about, nor can the different 

 species be distinguished unless they have a 

 deal of white hue in their plumage, such as 

 Heliothrix auritus, which is wholly white 

 underneath, although of a glittering green 

 color above, and the white-tailed Floristiga 

 mellivora. There is not a great variety of 

 humming-birds in the Amazons region, the 

 number of species being far smaller in these 

 uniform forest plains than in the diversified 

 valleys of the Andes, under the same parallels 

 of latitude. The family is divisible into two 

 groups, contrasted in form and habits, one 

 containing species which live entirely in the 

 shade of the forest, and tho other comprising 

 those which prefer open sunny places. The 

 forest species (Phaethorninse) are seldom seen 

 at flowers, flowers being, in the shady places 

 where they abide, of rare occurrence ; but 

 they search for insects on leaves, threading 

 the bushes and passing above and beneath 

 each leaf with wonderful rapidity. The 

 other group (Trochilinse) are not quite con- 

 fined to cleared places, as they come into the 

 forest wherever a tree is in blossom, and de- 

 scend into sunny openings where flowers m? 

 to be found. But it is only where the woods 

 arc less dense than usual that this is the 

 c'i-e ; in the Irfty forests ami twilight shades 

 of the lowland and islands they aie scarcely 



