BIRDS OF OBYDOS 



171 



praise of the Sabiah sung by young people to the accom- 

 paniment of the guitar. I found several times the nest 

 of the Carashue, which is built of dried grass and slender 

 twigs, and lined with mud ; the eggs are coloured and 

 spotted like those of our blackbird, but they are con- 

 siderably smaller. I was much pleased with a brilliant 

 little red-headed manikin, which I shot here (Pipra 

 cornuta). There were three males seated on a low branch, 

 and hopping slowly backwards and forwards, near to one 

 another, as though engaged in a kind of dance. In the 

 pleasant airy woods surrounding the sandy shores of the 

 pool behind the town, the yellow-bellied Trogon (T. 

 viridis) was very common. Its back is of a brilliant 

 metallic-green colour, and the breast steel blue. The 

 natives call it the Suruqua do Ygapo, or Trogon of the 

 flooded lands, in contradistinction to the red-breasted 

 species, which are named Suruquas da terra firma. I 

 often saw small companies of half a dozen individuals 

 quietly seated on the lower branches of trees. They 

 remained almost motionless for an hour or two at a time, 

 simply moving their heads, on the watch for passing in- 

 sects ; or, as seemed more generally to be the case, 

 scanning the neighbouring trees for fruit ; which they 

 darted off now and then, at long intervals, to secure, 

 returning always to the same perch. 



The species of mammals, birds, and insects found at 

 Obydos are, to a great extent, the same as those inhabit- 

 ing the well-explored tract of country lying along the 

 seacoast of Guiana. No other locality visited in the 

 Amazons region supplied, among its productions, so large 

 a proportion of Guiana forms. The four monkeys already 

 mentioned all recur at Cayenne. A general resemblance 

 of the species of those of Guiana is one of the principal 

 features in the zoology of the Amazons valley ; but in 

 the low lands a great number exist only in the form of 

 strongly modified local varieties ; indeed, many of them 

 are so much transformed that they pass for distinct 

 species ; and so they truly are, according to the received 

 definitions of species. In the somewhat drier district of 

 Obydos, the forms are more constant to their Guiana 

 types. We seem to obtain here a glimpse of the manu- 

 facture of new species in nature. The v/ay in which these 

 modifications occur merits a few remarks. I will there- 



