BEGINNING OF THE RAINY SEASON. 



93 



I can now no longer sleep on the ground, owing to the 

 rain and the insects, so sent into Brumado to try and get 

 a hammock. Senhor Joao Baptista sent me a very nice 

 one, as a present. It is made of the fibre of a kind of palm 

 called burity, and is very strong. 



October 3. — To-day I worked through a swamp — grand 

 for a naturalist, obnoxious to an engineer — with dense 

 masses of ferns now unfurling their new fronds of all colours, 

 from light red to brownish or green, a luxuriance of tree- 

 ferns with leaves six to eight feet long, and shrubs bearing 

 the most fragrant white flowers, while Morphos {M. Achil- 

 land) and Heliconius were abundant. 



Having read in my cookery book a recipe for fried 

 " tanajuras," a kind of ant, I was most anxious to come 

 across this insect and try the dish. On September 30, 

 there was a great swarm of them flying about our camp. 

 They are very formidable-looking creatures, not unlike a 

 hornet, only entirely brown, three inches across the wing, 

 and over an inch long. Having taken sufficient for my 

 collection, I then set to work to capture them for food, in 

 my butterfly net. In a few minutes I had over a hundred, 

 and then followed the recipe in the book, which says, " Take 

 a number of tanajuras and scald them in boiling water, 

 then pull off the abdomens, which are to be fried in fat, 

 sprinkling them with salt and pepper. When they are 

 well cooked, serve them as a surprise dish. In taste they 

 resemble prawns." The females only are used, as they are 

 full of eggs. I confess I tried my first tanajura with much 

 delicacy, but, finding it excellent, ate half a dozen, and 

 finally finished the whole lot. 



I must next tell you something more interesting about 

 them, as, being Sunday, I had leisure to watch. I noticed 

 nothing remarkable about the males, but observed the 



