properly in the half-seen moving beast. We found where the herd had
wallowed in the mud. The stomachs of the peccaries we killed contained
wild figs, palm nuts, and bundles of root fibres. The dead beasts were
covered with ticks. They were at least twice the weight of the smaller
peccaries.

On the ride home we saw a buck of the small species of bush deer, not
half the size of the kind I had already shot. It was only a patch of
red in the bush, a good distance off, but I was lucky enough to hit
it. In spite of its small size it was a full-grown male, of a species
we had not yet obtained. The antlers had recently been shed, and the
new antler growth had just begun. A great jabiru stork let us ride by
him a hundred and fifty yards off without thinking it worth while to
take flight. This day we saw many of the beautiful violet orchids; and
in the swamps were multitudes of flowers, red, yellow, lilac, of which
I did not know the names.

I alluded above to the queer custom these people in the interior of
Brazil have of gelding their hunting-dogs. This absurd habit is
doubtless the chief reason why there are so few hounds worth their
salt in the more serious kinds of hunting, where the quarry is the
jaguar or big peccary. Thus far we had seen but one dog as good as the
ordinary cougar hound or bear hound in such packs as those with which
I had hunted in the Rockies and in the cane-brakes of the lower
Mississippi. It can hardly be otherwise when every dog that shows
himself worth anything is promptly put out of the category of
breeders--the theory apparently being that the dog will then last
longer. All the breeding is from worthless dogs, and no dog of proved
worth leaves descendants.