124 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



resident near Curitibanos. He saw the ground still up- 

 turned, the mounds of clay on the rocky plateau, and the 

 remains of the moved earth in the rocky bed of the brook 

 quite plainly, and came to the conclusion that it must have 

 been the work of two animals, the size of which must have 

 been from two to three metres in breadth. 



"In the same neighbourhood, according to Senhor Lebino, 

 a minhocao had been seen several times before. A black 

 woman going to draw water from a pool near a house one 

 morning, according to her usual practice, found the whole 

 pool destroyed, and saw a short distance off an animal 

 which she described as being as big as a house moving off 

 along the ground. The people whom she summoned to see 

 the monster were too late, and found only traces of the 

 animal, which had apparently plunged over a neighbouring 

 cliff into deep water. In the same district a young man 

 saw a huge pine suddenly overturned, when there was no 

 wind and no one to cut it. On hastening up to discover 

 the cause, he found the surrounding earth in movement, and 

 an enormous worm-like black animal in the middle of it, 

 about twenty-five metres long, and with two horns on its 

 head. 



" In the province of Sao Paulo, as Senhor Lebino also 

 states, not far from Ypanema, is a spot that is still called 

 Charquinho, that is, Little Marsh, as it formerly was, but 

 some years ago a minhocao made a trench through the 

 marsh into the Ypanema river, and so converted it into 

 the bed of a stream. 



" In the year 1849, Senhor Lebino was on a journey near 

 Arapehy, in the State of Uruguay. There he was told that 

 there was a dead minhocao to be seen a few miles off, 

 which had got wedged into a narrow cleft of a rock, and so 

 perished. Its skin was said to be as thick as the bark of a 

 pine tree, and formed of hard scales like those of an 

 armadillo. 



" From all these stories it would appear conclusive that 

 in the high district where the Uruguay and the Parana have 



