230 



THE LOWER AMAZONS 



the mass of the forest is composed, besides palms, of 

 Leguminosae, or trees of the bean family, in endless 

 variety as to height, shape of foliage, flowers, and fruit ; 

 of silk-cotton trees, colossal nut-trees (Lecythideae), and 

 Cecropiae, the underwood and water-frontage consisting 

 in great part of broad-leaved Musaceae, Marantaceae, and 

 succulent grasses : all of which are of light shades of green. 

 The forest of the Rio Negro are almost destitute of these 

 large-leaved plants and grasses, which give so rich an 

 appearance to the vegetation wherever they grow ; the 

 margins of the stream being clothed with bushes or low 

 trees, having the same gloomy monotonous aspect as 

 the mangroves of the shores of creeks near the Atlantic. 

 The uniformly small but elegantly-leaved exogenous trees, 

 which constitute the mass of the forest, consist in great 

 part of members of the Laurel, Myrtle, Bignoniaceous 

 and Rubiaceous orders. The soil is generally a stiff loam, 

 whose chief component part is the Tabatinga clay, which 

 also forms low cliffs on the coast in some places, where it 

 overlies strata of coarse sandstone. This kind of soil and 

 the same geological formation prevail, as we have seen, 

 in many places on the banks of the Amazons, so that the 

 great contrast in the forest-clothing of the two rivers 

 cannot arise from this cause. 



I did not stay long enough at Barra to make a large 

 collection of the animal productions of the neighbour- 

 hood. I obtained one species of monkey ; not more 

 than a dozen birds, and about 300 species of insects. 

 Judging from these materials, the fauna appears to have 

 much in common with that of the seacoast of Guiana ; 

 but, at the same time, it contains a considerable number 

 of species not hitherto found in Guiana, or in any other 

 part of South America. The resemblance between the 

 eastern shore of the Rio Negro and the distant coast of 

 Guiana, in this respect, appears to be greater than that 

 between the Rio Negro and the banks of the Upper 

 Amazons. 1 



1 My own material is perhaps not sufficient to establish this 

 view of the relations of the fauna, for it requires the comparison 

 of an extensive series of species to obtain sound results on such 

 subjects. A few conspicuous instances, however, pointed to 

 the conclusion above mentioned. For example : in birds, the 

 beautiful seven-coloured Tanager, Calliste tatao, the ' sete 



