658 



NATURALIST'S GUIDE TO THE AMERICAS 



America. At present we know almost 

 nothing of it. Up to now gravitation 

 and tree-trunks swarming with terrible 

 ants have kept us at bay, and of the 

 tree-top life we have obtained only 

 unconnected facts and specimens. For 

 the most part my glasses showed forms 

 silhouetted in black against the bright 

 sky beyond. I could fire upward and 

 with a heavily loaded choke bore usually 

 bring down the bird I desired. Or I 

 could put my Indians to chopping down 

 some of the great trees, and after hours 

 of labor, if no interfering trees or binding 

 lianas set our work at naught, I could 

 search among the mass of broken, 

 bruised foliage, an almost hopeless 

 task, for casual specimens. And what 

 I found might often have been brushed 

 down from the mid-jungle, or have 

 been disturbed among the very leaves 

 of the ground. 



With my shot bird in my hand and 

 my black silhouettes and my scattering 

 of crushed specimens, I was very far 

 from real knowledge of tree-top life. 

 What of the tree-frogs, and butterflies 

 and birds and unknown hosts of crea- 

 tures which never voluntarily descend 

 to the ground. There awaits a rich 

 harvest for the naturalist who over- 

 comes the obstacles — gravitation, ants, 

 thorns, rotten trunks — and mounts to 

 the summits of the jungle trees. 

 Another year we hope to begin this 

 work, and to sit in hammocks or on 

 platforms swung aloft among the tou- 

 cans, macaws, parrots and caciques, 

 the umbrella, the calf and the bell- 

 birds whose strange distant notes or 

 whose dead bodies were merely tantaliz- 

 ing invitations to the manifold secrets 

 which intimate observation among the 

 tree-tops is certain to reveal. 



To show the stratified activities of a 

 few typical groups of jungle birds and 

 mammals, I have prepared the fol- 

 lowing rough diagram : 



TYPICAL GROUPS 



Ground 

 Partridges Tinamou 



Low forest {0-20 ft.) 

 Trumpeters Wrens 



Antbirds 

 Manakins 



Thrushes 



Mid forest {20-70 ft.) 



Curassows Barbets 



Guans Jacamars 



Pigeons Puffbirds 



Hawks Goldbirds 



Owls Mourners 



Motmots Honey-creepers 

 Trogons 



Tree-tops {70-200 ft.) 



Cotingas Parrakeets 



Toucans Giant Caciques, 



Macaws etc. 

 Parrots 



GROUPS FOUND TYPICALLY IN MORE THAN 

 ONE ZONE 



Ground 

 Goatsuckers 



Low forest {0-20 ft.) 

 Goatsuckers Hummingbirds 



Mid-forest {20-70 ft.) 



Hummingbirds Tanagers 



Flycatchers 



Tree-tops {70-200 ft.) 



Flycatchers Tanagers 



Hummingbirds 



Mammals permit a similar mode of 

 representation of altitudinal distri- 

 bution: 



Ground 



Tree-tops 

 Red Howlers Beesa Monkeys 



The following mammals occur at 

 the Station: Opossums: Didelphis mar- 

 supialis, Marmosa chloe, Marmosa 



