Public lotteries are to the Brazilian what horse-racing is to the Englishman and baseball to the North American. It is a form of excitement, with a chance of betting something and winning a great deal, an interest apart from the ordinary round of business. Opinion is not popularly opposed to the system in Brazil, any more than it is in, for instance, Italy, and in like manner it is conducted by the Federal Government, is a recognized source of revenue, and many charities and other worthy institutions supported by the authorities derive their main income from it. Few people express any adverse sentiments to these regularized lotteries, but an amusing offshoot from it, illegal, forbidden, pounced upon now and again by the police, generally denounced by the press, and indulged in by everyone, is the famous _bicho_. A _bicho_ is in Brazil any kind of animal or bird or insect—everything living is popularly a _bicho_—and in this underground lottery groups of numbers are represented by a deer or monkey, butterfly or tiger, etc., something more interesting than a bald set of figures. The _bicho_ was of independent origin, with twenty-five animals represented, but nowadays depends upon the government results, and is really a gamble on a gamble, but with the advantage that combinations and groups can be played on, and very small sums staked. You can stake a few pennies on your favourite humming-bird again and again without feeling the loss when the _anta_ persists in coming up instead, and there would be little harm done did not servants sent to the market get the _bicho_ habit so badly, together with shoe-shiners and waiters and all the working class, that in its acutest form “playing on the _bicho_” becomes an obsession equal to drug-taking. Tickets for the _bicho_ can be bought at many newsdealers, in scores of shops, little banks and financial houses run it, and some daily papers print pictures of the winning animals: it is well not to stake more than a milreis or two, because while a modest winning will be paid your gain of a conto would probably be met by the assurance that the ticket-seller cannot pay. In such a case there is no redress as the whole thing is illegal. Its chief objection in the eyes of the authorities is that it does not yield a public revenue, and that people spend, in the aggregate, more money on the _bicho_ than on public lotteries which are sources of governmental income. Nevertheless, denounced, raided, and occasionally prosecuted, the _bicheiros_ continue to exist and to furnish a mild form of excitement and adventure. I do not think that lotteries are more objectionable originators of a thrill than cocktails and whiskies dear to the Anglo-Saxon; in regard to heady liquors the Latin is universally abstemious, and the rule is not broken in Brazil.