THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 149 



difficulty, by the aid of dogs baying and driving him up a 

 tree, where he is despatched with bullets. 



Owing to bad weather we remained two days at our moor- 

 ings. 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 grat- 

 ing noise which it makes when caught by hook and line, 

 and which can be 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, 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 i^th. We got under way and passed Punta 

 Gorda, where there is a colony of tame Indians from the 

 province of Missiones. 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 intwined 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 flat- 

 tened 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, differing 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 buried in the water. Thus skimming 

 the surface, they ploughed it in their course : the water was 



