Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/126

 It settled on our backs by twos and threes at a time, and pricked us through our thick cotton shirts, making us start and cry out with the sudden pain. I secured a dozen or two as specimens. As an instance of the extremely confined ranges of certain species it may be mentioned that I did not find this insect in any other part of the country except along half a mile or so of this gloomy forest road.

We were amused at the excessive and almost absurd tameness of a fine Mutum or Curassow turkey that ran about the house. It was a large glossy-black species (the Mitu tuberosa) having an orange-coloured beak surmounted by a bean-shaped excrescence of the same hue. It seemed to consider itself as one of the family: attended at all the meals, passing from one person to another round the mat to be fed, and rubbing the sides of its head in a coaxing way against their cheeks or shoulders. At night it went to roost on a chest in a sleeping-room beside the hammock of one of the little girls, to whom it seemed particularly attached, following her wherever she went about the grounds. I found this kind of Curassow bird was very common in the forests of the Cuparí; but it is rare on the Upper Amazons, where an allied species which has a round instead of a bean-shaped waxen excrescence on the beak (Crax globicera) is the prevailing kind. These birds in their natural state never descend from the tops of the loftiest trees, where they live in small flocks and build their nests. The Mitu tuberosa lays two rough-shelled, white eggs; it is fully as large a bird as the common turkey, but the flesh when cooked