FAUNA. The Amazon Valley is covered with thick forests of lofty growth, which are thinly inhabited by numerous independent savage tribes. The animal life is exceedingly rich in numbers, but the flood conditions which so generally com pel arboreal habits in unaquatic animals greatly limit at least the species of mammals. The principal animals are the tapir, jaguar, panther, envy, armadillo, sloth, peccary. ant-eater, and monkey. Birds are exceedingly numerous; many of them are songless, but bedecked with gorgeously colored feathers; such are the hum ming, birds and parrots. Among the snakes, the giant anaconda is the best known, and of the lizards the iguana attains formidable size. Numerous alligators and turtles, and the great water mammal, the manatee, frequent the river and its branches. Of fishes there is a greater variety than in any other stream, and in fact a large proportion of the present known species are found in the Amazon. insects exist in the forests in countless numbers. Neither the fauna nor the flora of the Amazon has been more than partly studied, and that mostly by visiting nat uralists.
FtortA. The flora of the immediate vicinity of the river is that which flourishes in a watery soil, and which will survive the long-continued annual inundation which occurs in midsummer. There is no suspension of plant activity, and the leaves remain green throughout the year, and no month is without its bloom or fruit. Aquatic plants grow in great profusion and attain enor mous size, a prominent example being the giant lily, l'ictoria regia. In the undergrowth occur rubias. myrtles, leguminosfe, epiphytic orchids, bromelia, and ferns.
The Amazonian forest presents to the river a wall-like frontage of trees, interwoven with vines and roots clothed and fringed with moss in the most fantastic manner. A continuous mass of verdure overhead has a secondary flora of its own. Some of the trees grow to a height of even 200 feet; such are the moviatinga, the samauma, and the massarandnba. Palms, bam boos, and ferns grow in profusion; but few tree ferns and almost no cacti grow immediately on the river.
Among the ports on the Amazon (from its mouth upward) are Macaph, Santarem, Obidos, Maniios. Tetfe, and Tabatinga. The commercial outlet of the Amazon basin is Parii, on the Rio Para, the estuary of the Tocantins.
BleraocitArnr. Rates, The Naturalist on the River Amazon (London, 1892) ; Wallace, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (London, 1870, second edition, 18S9) ; Agassiz, Voyage as llrcsil (Paris, 1869) ; Brown and Lidstone. Fifteen Thousand Miles on the Amazon (London. 1878) ; Shichtel, Der A m azo n ens t ro (Strassburg, 1893) ; Marajti, As Regioes Atnazonicas (Lisbon, 1895) ; Herndon and Gibbon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon (Washington, 1853) ; Ex pedition into the Valley of the Amazon, 1539, Ma, 1639, translated and edited by Markham, published by the Hakluyt Society (London, 1859) ; Keller-Leuzinger, The Amazon and Ma deira Rivers (New York, 1S74): Smith, Brazil, the Amazon and the Coast (New York, 1879) ; Carvajal, Deseubrimiento del rio de las Amazo nas, with an introduction by Medina (Seville, 1894) ; Schutz-Holzhausen, Der Amazonas (Frei burg, 1895).