228 EXCURSIONS AROUND EGA. Chap. IV. 
were of almost all colours, sizes, and shapes : I noticed 
here altogether eighty species, belonging to twenty-two 
different genera. It is a singular fact that, with very 
few exceptions, all the individuals of these various 
species thus sporting in sunny places were of the male 
sex ; their partners, which are much more soberly dressed 
and immensely less numerous than the males, being con- 
fined to the shades of the woods. Every afternoon, as 
the sun was getting low, I used to notice these gaudy 
sunshine-loving swains trooping off to the forest, where 
I suppose they would find their sweethearts and wives. 
The most abundant, next to the very common sulphur- 
yellow and orange-coloured kinds (Callidryas, seven 
species), were about a dozen species of Cybdelis, which 
are of large size, and are conspicuous from their liveries 
of glossy dark-blue and purple. A superbly-adorned 
creature, the Callithea Markii, having wings of a thick 
texture, coloured sapphire-blue and orange, was only 
an occasional visitor. On certain days, when the 
weather was very calm, two small gilded-green species 
(Symmachia Trochilus and Colubris) literally swarmed 
on the sands, their glittering wings lying wide open on 
the flat surface. The beach terminates, eight miles 
beyond Ega, at the mouth of a rivulet ; the character 
of the coast then changes, the river banks being masked 
by a line of low islets amid a labyrinth of channels. 
In all other directions my very numerous excursions 
were by water ; the most interesting of those made in 
the immediate neighbourhood were to the houses of 
Indians on the banks of retired creeks ; an account of 
one of these trips will suffice. 
