IX 
AROUND SAO GABRIEL 
303 
is a shrubby Solanum [S. Jamaicense) 4 to 6 feet 
high, which furnished food to thousands of black 
Hemiptera in the dusk of the evening and about 
sunrise of a morning in the month of January. At 
their feeding-times they hover over the plants like 
swarms of bees and the bushes are almost black 
with them. Standing at my door one evening 
after sunset, a flock of these settled down on a 
Solanum bush close by. I fetched a small pint 
bottle and commenced filling it with the insects ; but 
though I frightened away twice as many as I put 
into my bottle, in ten minutes scarcely anything 
was left of the leaves save the midribs. It is from 
inch to if inch long, and is remarkable for 
the very diminutive thorax and for the tumid 
abdomen protruding much beyond the elytra. 
Expedition to the Serra do Gama 
Soon after reaching Sao Gabriel I formed a 
plan for ascending the serras which lie half a day's 
journey up the river on the right bank. The sitio 
nearest their base is occupied by an old man (nearly 
seventy) named Gama, and his father occupied it 
before him. Hence these serras are now known 
by no other name than " Serra do Gama." . . . 
On Friday, March 5, I removed with my ap- 
paratus to Gama's sitio, whence I sent one of my 
men on to Sao Joaquin to purchase an uba, my 
little montaria being ill-fitted for buffeting with the 
caxoeiras. During his absence I employed myself 
with exploring the environs of Gama's house. 
The caapoera is of loftier trees than usual, but slender. . . . 
Adjacent to the caapoera was a caatinga-soil, a thin covering 
