244 ELEVEN WEEKS IN NORTH-EASTEKN BRAZIL. 



Northwards there lies between Eecife and Olinda a low, mangrove- 

 covered, swampy tract, separated from the sea by a beach of sand and 

 shingle, whilst to the south lies Cocoa-nut. Island and more swampy 

 country. Towards the west lies the suburb called Boa Vista ; and here, 

 and extending more or less to Caxanga (an outlying village celebrated 

 for its pine-apples, with which Eecife is connected by a street-railway), 

 are situated the villas and houses of the more wealthy inhabitants. 

 These are generally surrounded by gardens, often well kept and stocked 

 with all kinds of tropical plants, native or otherwise. Here, in a quarter 

 called Estancia, I found excellent accommodation at a boarding-house kept 

 by two American ladies, and tenanted chiefly by Englishmen engaged in 

 business in Eecife. As the house stood in a large garden of its own, 

 with numerous fruit-trees, and abutted on a considerable tract of marshy 

 and little-cultivated ground, I determined on ma'king this my head 

 quarters, and after safely passing my baggage through the Custom House, 

 set to work on the birds and insects. 



There are some considerable patches of wood on the outskirts of the 

 town in this direction, and numerous more or less deserted gardens, 

 orangeries, and pieces of marshy ground, in which birds were fairly 

 abundant, though in the town itself excepting Urubiis (Cathartes atratus), 

 a stray Humming-bird or two, Swallows (Hirundo leucorrhoa), and 

 " Lavenderas " (Fluvicola dimacura), which last are to be seen everywhere 

 and are very tame, like Eobins not a bird is to be seen. No regular 

 forest is met with till near Caxanga, about 8-10 miles from Eecife, where 

 the country becomes hilly and covered with thick wood, which, in places, 

 is, I believe, undoubted virgin forest, though most of this has been cleared 

 and replaced by second-growth (capoeira) of varying size and thickness. 

 Unfortunately the weather was not all favourable to collecting during 

 my stay in Eecife, the rainy season, which usually, I was told, ceases 

 about the end of July, lasting on more or less for another month *. As 

 Ibis, 1881, the soil here is, as nearly universally elsewhere in Brazil, a thick red 

 p. 316. clay, the roads and by-paths remained almost impassable, rain falling 

 heavily nearly every day for some hours. 



In the " Gymnasium " of San Antonio is a small museum, with a 

 decent, though badly named, series of birds and Mammalia. Most of the 



* The dry and hot weather (which also is the season for yellow fever on the coast) 

 in Pernambuco commences about September and continues till March. November, 

 January, and February are usually about the hottest months. May, June, and July 

 are all very wet months, on the coast at least. The heat, even during the hot season, 

 is never very great ; during my stay, the ordinary temperature was about 7S-80 F. 

 in the shade, and about 8-10 cooler at night. The thermometer rarely falls below 

 65 even on the coldest nights, and at that temperature one begins to shiver in the 

 tropics and want blankets ! Further information on the climate of Pernambuco will 

 be found in a paper by M. Beringer in the ' Annuaire ' of the French Meteorological 

 Society, vol. xxvi. p. 28 (1878). 



