162 



Including- the tail, it is two feet three incheg 

 long. We had observed it also on the banks 

 of the Atabapo, the Temi, and the Rio Negro. 

 The flesh of the cahuei, which is frequently 

 eaten, is black, and sometimes tough. These 

 macaws, the plumage of which glows with the 

 most vivid tints of purple, blue, and yellow, are 

 a great ornament to the Indian farm-yards; 

 they do not yield in beauty to the peacock, the 

 golden pheasant, the pauxis % or the alectors. 

 The practice of rearing parrots, birds of a family 

 so different from the gallinaceous tribes, had 

 already struck Columbus^. When he dis- 

 covered America, he saw macaws, or large 

 parrots, which served as food to the natives of 

 the Caribbee islands instead of fowls. 



A majestic tree more than sixty feet high,, 

 which the planters call frutta de burro, grows 

 round the little village of Maypures. It is a 



* The word pauxi does not denote a Species in the 

 Spanish colonies, but the two subgenera crax and ourax of 

 Mr. Cuvier. (A distinction is made between pauxi depiedra, 

 crax pauxi, and pauxi de copete % crax alector). The two 

 other subgenera of the alector are called at the Oroonoko 

 pavas de monte (penelope) and guacharacas (ortalida). 



t Gryn.j Orb. Nov. p. 68. The Spaniards found also in 

 Coriana, (on the coast of Coro), in the farm-yards of the 

 Indians, anseres anates (ib. p. 83). Were these the Mus- 

 covy ducks (anas moschata), known in the farm-yards of 

 France by the equally improper names of Barbary and Turk- 



