1833.] THE SCISSOR-BEAK. 129 



Owing to bad weather we remained two days at our moorings. 

 Our only amusement was catching fish for our dinner: there were 

 several kinds, and all good eating. A fish called the " armado " (a 

 Silurus) is remarkable from a harsh grating 'noise which it makes 

 when caught by hook and line, and which can bs distinctly heard 

 when the fish is beneath the water. This same fish has the power 

 of firmly catching hold of any object, such as the blade of an oar or 

 the fishing-line, with the strong spine both of its pectoral and 

 dorsal fin. In the evening the weather was quite tropical, k the 

 thermometer standing at 79. Numbers of fireflies were hovering 

 about, and the musquitoes were very troublesome, I exposed my 

 hand for five minutes, and it was soon black with them; I do 

 not suppose there could have been less than fifty, all busy sucking. 



October 15th. We got under way and passed Punta Gorda, 

 where there is a colony of tame Indians from the province of 

 Missioues. We sailed rapidly down the current, but before sunset, 

 from a silly fear of bad weather, we brought- to in a narrow arm of 

 the river. I took the boat and rowed some distance up this creek. 

 It was very narrow, winding, and deep ; on each side a wall thirty 

 or forty feet high, formed by trees intwiued with creepers, gave to 

 the canal a singularly gloomy appearance. I here saw a very 

 extraordinary bird, called the Scissor-beak (Rhynchops nigra). It 

 has short legs, web feet, extremely long-pointed wings, and is of 

 about the size of a tern. The beak is flattened laterally, that is, in 



a plane at right angles to that of a spoonbill or duck. It is as flat 

 and elastic as an ivory paper-cutter, and the lower mandible, 

 differently from every other bird, is an inch and a half longer than 

 the upper. In a lake near Maldonado, from which the water had 

 been nearly drained, and which, in consequence, swarmed with 

 small fry, I saw several of these birds, generally in small ^flocks, 

 flying rapidly backwards and forwards close to the surface of the 

 lake. They kept their bills wide open, and the lower mandible half 



K 



