6162 



Natural 'History Colleclors, 



people have adopted too completely almost the only thing the lovr 

 white traders at the village have had to teach them, i. e., the habit of 

 drunkenness. Life in St. Paulo is an almost perpetual orgy. I never 

 saw anything so disgusting in the course of my travels : if it were 

 not for this, the village would be a very good station for a naturalist. 

 There are means for making excursions by water beyond the Peruvian 

 frontier, as well as up some of the neighbouring rivers. The vicinity 

 of the village itself also offers many advantages ; there are good paths 

 leading away many miles through the forest: the surface of the 

 country is much broken up and varied ; the village itself is situated 

 on a hill, considered a remarkable elevation in this flat country ; the 

 summit of which forms a plateau, which extends about a mile into the 

 interior, where it descends to a beautiful valley in the midst of the 

 most luxuriant forest. On one side of the village the plateau ends 

 abruptly, descending a springy and boggy meadow, and thence 

 through the forest deep down into a cool shady dell, at the bottom of 

 which flows a brook of icy-cold water. Brooks, large and small, tra- 

 verse the forest in almost every direction, and one is constantly meet- 

 ing with springs and bubbling sources. Some of the rivulets flow 

 over a sandy and pebbly bed, whose banks are clothed with the most 

 exuberant and beautiful vegetation. Indians have built their slight 

 palm-thatched huts on their borders, without clearing, however, any 

 extent of the forest, so you have everywhere agreeable shade and 

 coolness. I think I have never seen such lovely spots as some parts 

 of the banks of these rivulets; cheered even amid the heats of mid- 

 day by the songs of many strange birds. There is one bird, especially, 

 which I have heard only once or twice at Ega — here very common ; 

 the people call it the " realejo " or the hand organ, — I find its notes 

 exactly like those of the flageolet; but its music is not so perfect as 

 that of our European songsters, because the strain is too short, con- 

 sisting of only a few tender notes like the commencement of an air, 

 and then stopping suddenly, or interrupted by a clicking noise like 

 a hand-organ out of wind : I could not get a sight of this bird, 

 although its voice seems to come from the trees close by. 



I applied myself during my stay here chiefly to Entomology : 

 I was not successful in obtaining hunters to assist me in forming 

 a collection of the birds of the locality, and there is little or nothing 

 to be found in other departments. I was very glad to discover, 

 in the course of the first few days, that a great number of the most 

 conspicuous diurnal Lepidoptera were quite different from an}'thing I 

 had yet seen. 1 found a locality just within the borders of the forest^ 



