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Nicholeto Chordiman Directory 10
Page 06
The Whooping Crane is much larger than the common crane, which it otherwise much resembles except in color; its plumage, in its adult state, is pure white, the tips of the wings black. He spends the winter in the southern parts of North America, and in summer migrates far northwards. The crane feeds on roots, seeds, etc., as well as on reptiles, worms, insects, and on some of the smaller quadrupeds. They journey in flocks from fifty to a hundred, and rise to an immense height in the air, uttering their loud harsh cries, and occasionally alighting to seek food in fields or marshes; and when they descend on a field they do sad havoc to the crops, several doing sentinel duty while the majority are feeding. In general it is a very peaceful bird, both in its own society and those of the forest.
Tiberius served under his brother-in-law in Africa, and was the first who scaled the walls of Carthage. He was Quaestor in B.C. 137, and accompanied the Consul C. Hostilius to Spain, where he saved the army by obtaining a treaty with the Numantines, which the Senate refused to ratify.[61] In passing through Etruria, on his way to Spain, Tiberius had observed with grief and indignation the deserted state of that fertile country. Thousands of foreign slaves were tending the flocks and cultivating the soil of the wealthy landowners, while Roman citizens, thus thrown out of employment, could scarcely procure their daily bread, and had not a clod of earth to call their own. He now conceived the design of applying a remedy to this state of things, and with this view became a candidate for the Tribunate, and was elected for the year B.C. 133.
We went along the banks of the beautiful island of Antas, after which we halted at the house of Jose Maracati, a Mundurucu chieftain, with thirty Indians under him. A delegate of the Para Province in charge of the Indians--a man of strong Malay characteristics and evidently of Indian parentage--received us, and gave me much information about the local rubber industry. He told me that the best rubber found in that region was the kind locally called _seringa preta_, a black rubber which was coagulated with the smoke of the _coco de palmeira_. He calculated that 150 rubber trees gave about 14 kilos of rubber a day. The _seringa preta_ exuded latex all the year round, even during the rainy season.
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