A history of the Brazil

by James Henderson

The Cigarra, or Cricket, has more of the species of beetle than the locust.

The species of Butterflies are here very numerous, as I have before observed. A collection of sixteen hundred different sorts has already been made in the Brazil, and unquestionably there are an infinite number yet for collection to occupy the industry of the naturalist. The most beautiful are found in the vicinity of the tropic and the temperate zone.

There are also a great variety of flies and phosphoric insects, which illuminate the hedges at night by the brilliant lights they emit.

There are also a great diversity of Ants. The most remarkable are those of Mandioca, of Correiçao, and the Cupim. The first are of a reddish colour, and a pest to agricultural productions, as well as fruit trees, such as the orange, and others equal in size or larger. It is necessary every day, in order to preserve the mandioca from the destructive attacks of this insect, to lay something for them to eat, in order that they may not devour the plantations at night or strip the trees of their foliage. It is during the night alone that they commit these depredations. They form spacious subterraneous cavities, with many entrances and outlets, distant one from the other. When it happens that they form this cavity below the foundation-wall of a house sometimes it sinks, and, during the rainy season, most probably falls to the ground. The Correiçao[48] Ant is small, and moves from one district to another in innumerable legions, covering many roods of territory in their march. No living insect can remain upon their line of march: the smaller ones are killed, and the larger obliged to fly. The Cupim is a small Ant, light coloured, and flat, subsisting upon the flour or small particles of wood, with which, and a species of glue that issues from its body, it constructs an arch or vault over the road by which it travels, in order that it may not be seen by other insects and birds which destroy it. It is very destructive to the timbers of dwelling-houses, and builds its residence in the ceilings of the same materials, in a round form full of little cells; sometimes it constructs it upon the points of branches of trees, but the greater number of Cupims erect them upon the ground, with earth, rendered solid by the admixture of the said glue, the whole of the interior being full of cells, saloons, and covered ways: their form is pyramidical, some with many feet in height, and they resist for several winters the tempests of rain that assail them; but the claws of the ant-bear crumble them to dust in a moment, when their inhabitants are as quickly devoured.

There are divers species of the Bee, but none of them can be compared with the European bee in the utility and excellence of its honey.

That called Urucu is the most numerous, and of a gray colour. Its hive is of wood, and the door is an orifice by which one can pass commodiously at a time, and where there is always one upon the watch, with its head out, in order to impede the entrance of small insects. This sentinel is subject to the inconvenience of drawing back upon the entrance or going out of any one of the commonwealth. The mumbuca is of a blackish colour. The mandassaia is black and short. These three kinds are of the size of the European bee. The tubim is smaller. The theuba is also small, and of a yellow cast. The cupimeira, so denominated because it occupies the houses deserted by the Cupim ant, makes good honey. The tatahira and the saranho are the only species that are mordacious. The getahi is of the size of a mosquito, and manufactures a honey of a very liquid and delicious nature. The caruara is a little larger than the preceding. The pregiuçoza is of the size of the getahi, and produces an insipid honey. That named mosquitinho is very small and black, and lives on the ground. None of these species form the honey-comb like those of Europe; the combs are round, and the cells unequal, in the form of a bubble, without regularity, and the wax is more or less glutinous, and never has the whiteness of that of the old world. All the bee-hives, of whatever species of bees they are, have few inhabitants, comparatively speaking.

There are also various casts of Wasps, or Morimbondos, as they are called in the country. The inxuy is delicate, and makes its habitation generally of a round form, plain, and of an ash colour, attached to a branch, or fastened to some plant; its combs are deep, and introduced one into the other, the orifices or cells are full of a yellow savoury honey, which ultimately becomes like refined sugar. The inxu is large, fabricates its combs according to the method of the preceding, and fills them with most excellent honey.

If the Brazil cannot boast of so great a variety of quadrupeds as some countries, perhaps no other region of the world equals it in the innumerable species of birds which it possesses, more wonderful still in the beauty of their plumage and variety of their song.

Amongst them are those which follow, namely: —

The Alma de Gato (Soul of a Cat) is of the size of a pigeon, the lower part ash-coloured, and the upper of a gold colour, with a long tail, short and curved beak. It has no song.