156 FISHES I HAVE KNOWN 



some in appearance, with a peculiar peacock-like 

 spot on its tail, are both captured with morsels of 

 fruit. 



Many succulent siluroids (generally scaleless 

 fish) exist, one of them being the notorious 

 electric eel, and another the surubu, with striped 

 and spotted skin and long maxillary barbels. 



As to strange-looking creatures, they abound. 

 One of them, the needle-fish much like a gar- 

 fish, but with its long, slender, sharply pointed 

 jaws of equal length rushes into the midst of 

 shoals of small fry, and transfixes them with its 

 long spear. The sting-ray, with a slender, jagged- 

 edged spike, three inches long, sticking from out 

 one side of its long, fleshy tail, is capable of 

 inflicting an agonising wound. 



South American Indians catch these fish by 

 poisoning the water of still pools and reaches with 

 a decoction made from a certain creeper, when 

 incredible numbers are stupefied, and rise helpless 

 to the surface. They also catch them with nets, 

 rods and lines, and even with artificial flies skilfully 

 made of gaudy parrot feathers. 



In one of the upper reaches of the Tocantins 

 River, in a deep pool beneath the rapids of 

 Machado, 1 took up my station in a canoe, armed 

 with an orthodox salmon-rod, a hundred yards of 



