Chap. L 
WHITE ANTS. 
59 
one is walking, and then squatting down on their 
heels, are difficult to distinguish from the surrounding 
soil. One kind (Hydropsalis psalidurus ?) has a long 
forked tail. In the daytime they are concealed in the 
wooded ilhas, where I very often saw them crouched 
and sleeping on the ground in the dense shade. They 
make no nest, but lay their eggs on the bare ground, 
Their breeding time is in the rainy season, and fresh 
eggs are found from December to June. Birds have not 
one uniform time for nidification here, as in temperate 
latitudes. Gulls and plovers lay in September, when the 
sand-banks are exposed in midriver in the dry season. 
Later in the evening, the singular notes of the goat- 
suckers are heard, one species crying Quae, Quae, another 
Chuck-co-co-cao ; and these are repeated at intervals 
far into the night in the most monotonous manner. A 
great number of toads are seen on the bare sandy path- 
ways soon after sunset. One of them was quite a 
colossus, about seven inches in length and three in 
height. This big fellow would never move out of the 
way until we were close to him. If we jerked him 
out of the path with a stick, he would slowly recover 
himself, and then turn round to have a good impudent 
stare. I have counted as many as thirty of these mon- 
sters within a distance of half a mile. 
The surface of the campos is disfigured in all direc- 
tions by earthy mounds and conical hillocks, the work 
of many different species of white ants. Some of 
these structures are five feet high, and formed of 
particles of earth worked into a material as hard as 
