RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 71 
was benumbed for a week afterwards. That was 
at Guayaquil, where the scorpions are of different 
species from those of the Amazon, and more virulent. 
It is a common thing there for a person stung by 
a scorpion to have the tongue paralysed for some 
hours. This property suggests a new version of 
The Taming of the Shrew, much to be commended 
to Guayaquilian Petruchios. 
The stinging properties of the large hairy tropical 
caterpillars are well known. The venom resides in 
the long fascicled hairs, and the pain of the sting 
is so like that of a nettle — although often far more 
acute, and extending far beyond the surface stung 
— that it is presumable the hairs are hollow, with 
a poison-bag at the base, like the stinging hairs of 
nettles. But an hour's careful examination of the 
hairs in the live animal would settle this question, 
so that it is useless to theorise about it. I have had 
rather too much experience of mere mechanical 
stinging by vegetable hairs, which are usually 
minute or scabrous bristles, closely set on the 
leaves, pods, or other parts of a plant, and so 
deciduous that a touch brings them off The pods 
of Mucunas {i.e. Cowitches), the spathes of some 
palms, the spathe-like bracts and stipules of 
Cecropias and some other Artocarps, are beset 
with this sort of pubescence, and I have often got 
considerably punished in collecting and preparing 
the specimens. In all these the bristles, or at 
least their points, remain sticking in the skin, and 
it is this that causes the irritation ; but after the 
sting of a caterpillar nothing is visible in the skin, 
beyond the inflamed surface. 
Leguminous trees are peculiarly liable to become 
