Occasional Notes. 357 
the skin from which these were torn out with the red 
dye-stuff called faroah, and making the birds drink water 
in which more of this faroah has been dissolved. This 
faroah, the produce of the pretty shrub Bixa Orellana, 
and known in the West Indian islands as roucou, in 
Europe as arnatto, is the, slightly orange, red dye so 
largely used by the Indians, especially the Caribs, to 
paint their own bodies. It therefore seems not impro- 
bable that in this case also the fanciful means employed 
to change the colour of the feathers are in accordance 
with the doctrine of signatures. 
3. There is a passage in Mr. Wallace's " Travels on 
the Amazon and Rio Negro" (p. 294), a book to which 
I have not access at the present moment, which records 
the practice of this feather-culture somewhat further south 
than Guiana. Mr. E. B. TYLOR,* quoting this instance 
from the Amazon, says that the method there is ' by 
plucking the feathers and rubbing some liquid into the 
skin, it is said the milky secretion from a small frog or 
toad.' And the latter writer immediately adds, — 'This 
is done in South America, but, so far as I know, not 
elsewhere ; and it seems reasonable to suppose that it 
was invented there.' 
I have now mentioned the only three recorded in- 
stances of this practice known to me. There are, how- 
ever, a few more words which have still to be added 
on the general subject. 
First, as to the once presumed purely American origin 
and practice of this kind of feather culture. Mr. TYLOR, 
since the publication of the passage just quoted from him 
has, he informs me in a private letter, found reason to 
* ' Early History of Mankind.' London, 1878. p. 177. 
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