opening his little mouth he draws it in; now shutting his lips, pushes it out a second time, retaining the ants in his mouth till the tongue has been completely exserted, when he swallows them. We afterwards met with numbers of these strange-looking animals. The small river near which we slept, was full of rounded blocks of limestone, which being very slippery, rendered our passage across it difficult, but fortunately all the luggage was got over in safety. We now travelled for a league through a bare, arid, hilly country, in which almost the only tree that exists, is a small gregarious species of _Vochysia_, and arrived at the house we expected to reach the night before, where I remained all day in order to preserve the skin of the ant-eater, and to arrange some of my other collections. This place is called Capão da Casca, and consists of but one small miserable hut, entirely formed of leaves of the Buriti palm. It was inhabited by a mulatto, his wife, and three children; there were but two very small apartments, so that we were obliged to sleep on our hide beds spread out on the ground before the house, where our men had kindled a large fire. The house is situated in the mouth of a small wooded valley, and the only cultivated ground I saw was a plantation of mandiocca. The miserable poverty of the family seemed to be entirely owing to the laziness of the man, who was a perfect picture of indolence. We left early on the following morning, with the intention of making a long journey, as the next house was said to be six long leagues distant, which I set down as equivalent to ten legal ones. Shortly after leaving the house we had to cross a small stream, the bed of which was very boggy, so that one of the horses stuck fast, and in trying to extricate himself fell, together with his load, into the stream. It was some time before the boxes could be taken off, by which time they became quite full of water,—fortunately it was not a load of botanical specimens; but one of the boxes contained the last remains of my stock of paper for packing dried plants, as well as a little box full of the skins of bats and other small quadrupeds, together with some insects, all of which were more or less destroyed. As this was the first horse that attempted to pass, I would not allow any of the others to venture across with their loads, all were unpacked and passed over by the men in safety. By the time everything was again put into travelling order, and we had gone on about half a league, it was mid-day, when we halted under a large tree in the hollow near a wooded marsh. Our first care was to dry all the articles that had been wetted in the morning, which operation was much favoured by the sun that shone brilliantly.