feed on the nuts of the Mucuja Palm (Acrocomia lasiospatha).
"These nuts, which are so hard as to be difficult to break with a
heavy hammer, are crushed to a pulp by the powerful beak of this
Macaw."

Mr. Bates' later part is mainly devoted to his residence at
Santarem, at the junction of the Rio Tapajos with the main
stream, and to his account of Upper Amazon, or Solimoens--the
Fauna of which is, as we shall presently see, in many respects
very different from that of the lower part of the river. At
Santarem--"the most important and most civilised settlement on
the Amazon, between the Atlantic and Para "--Mr. Bates made his
headquarters for three years and a half, during which time
several excursions up the little-known Tapajos were effected.
Some 70 miles up the stream, on its affluent, the Cupari, a new
Fauna, for the most part very distinct from that of the lower
part of the same stream, was entered upon. "At the same time a
considerable proportion of the Cupari species were identical with
those of Ega, on the Upper Amazon, a district eight times further
removed than the village just mentioned." Mr. Bates was more
successful here than on his excursion up the Tocantins, and
obtained twenty new species of fishes, and many new and
conspicuous insects, apparently peculiar to this part of the
Amazonian valley.

In a later chapter Mr. Bates commences his account of the
Solimoens, or Upper Amazons, on the banks of which he passed four
years and a half. The country is a "magnificent wilderness, where
civilised man has, as yet, scarcely obtained a footing-the
cultivated ground, from the Rio Negro to the Andes, amounting