210 ARTS AND GRAFTS OF GUIANA INDIANS [ETH. ANN. 38 
single blessedness until the following July, when the whole cycle of 
events already described once more takes its course. Schomburgk 
gives the scientific explanation of the so-called crab season (SR, 1, 
443). 
221. Mollusks.—The pretty little periwinkle (Nereis), judging 
from the heaps of them met with in the Pomeroon Carib middens. 
must have constituted a favorite article of diet in bygone days. It 
is still eaten. The large snails, Ampullaria urceus Fers (SR, 1, 196) 
and A. orinoccensis Ziegler (SR, 11, 425), are noted as excellent pick- 
me-ups after a drunken orgie (sec. 281). 
222. Earthworms.—Wallace, when speaking of earthworms as food 
for the Uaupes River Indians, says: “ Nor is it only hunger that makes 
them eat these worms, for they sometimes boil them with their fish 
to give it an extra relish (ARW, 201). On Awarihuta Creek, which 
flows into the upper Parima, the Indians set to work assiduously 
to dig up the earth at the water’s edge with long sticks, flattened at 
the end. .. . I found (says Schomburgk) they were searching for 
large worms which lie concealed in the mud. They seemed to me 
like our Lumbricus, or rather Gordius, only much thicker. After 
washing off the mud the Indians ate them raw, and apparently with 
much delight. . . . Ona small babracote we observed them smoking 
thousands of that species of worm which IT have before described 
(ScF, 230-234). 
223. Schomburgk refers to the caterpillars of a butterfly, some- 
thing like our cabbage-white, being eaten (SR, m1, 158). He speaks 
of another caterpillar, collected at the beginning of the wet season 
by the Makusi, which is considered an especial titbit by both old and 
young (SR, 1,120). Some species of Sphinx caterpillars were eaten 
by the Indians after roasting (App, 1, 415). On the road to Karica- 
paru I watched the Makusi women and Patamona men eating the riku, 
the 4 to 44 inch long caterpillar found in clusters on the trunk of the 
duru tree, a sort of “ pump wood,” an insect which ultimately, so the 
Indians say, develops into a yellow and green butterfly. It may be 
eaten raw in its entirety, after wrapping in a leaf and roasting, or it 
may be boiled in the “ pepper pot.” In the latter case the entrails are 
squeezed out behind previcus to cooking. So, again, in the savannas 
on the way to Roraima, the Makusi and Patamona collected among the 
grass a small caterpillar that was just about to enter on its pupal 
stage. This was during early July. The Makusi called it iki. It 
was eaten raw and apparently much relished. Quelch says that 
with the Arekuna a small red and black grasshopper, which is some- 
times met with in clusters on the low bushes, appears to be a very 
great delicacy when cooked (Ti, 1895, p. 152). In the neighbor- 
hood of Wailang Creek, on the Roraima road, my Patamona guides 
