Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/242

 were of almost all colours, sizes, and shapes: I noticed here altogether eighty species, belonging to twenty-two different genera. It is a singular fact that, with very few exceptions, all the individuals of these various species thus sporting in sunny places were of the male sex; their partners, which are much more soberly dressed and immensely less numerous than the males, being confined to the shades of the woods. Every afternoon, as the sun was getting low, I used to notice these gaudy sunshine-loving swains trooping off to the forest, where I suppose they would find their sweethearts and wives. The most abundant, next to the very common sulphur-yellow and orange-coloured kinds (Callidryas, seven species), were about a dozen species of Cybdelis, which are of large size, and are conspicuous from their liveries of glossy dark-blue and purple. A superbly-adorned creature, the Callithea Markii, having wings of a thick texture, coloured sapphire-blue and orange, was only an occasional visitor. On certain days, when the weather was very calm, two small gilded-green species (Symmachia Trochilus and Colubris) literally swarmed on the sands, their glittering wings lying wide open on the flat surface. The beach terminates, eight miles beyond Ega, at the mouth of a rivulet; the character of the coast then changes, the river banks being masked by a line of low islets amid a labyrinth of channels.

In all other directions my very numerous excursions were by water; the most interesting of those made in the immediate neighbourhood were to the houses of Indians on the banks of retired creeks; an account of one of these trips will suffice.