CAHOWS AND LONGTAILS 



to say Spring, if we wetted our lips very carefully 

 and holed down to finest whistle diaphragm, the 

 resulting high, two-toned phoe-he! might bring a 

 black-cap to our very face. My happiest refinement 

 of this was when I learned to bring a jungle wren 

 of the genus Leucolepia to my feet from a quarter 

 mile distance across a tropical swamp, by a single, 

 almost inhumanly high tone : And this is one of the 

 wariest of wrens, most difficult to stalk. I derive a 

 keen, childish joy from the knowledge that if today 

 I enter a tropical jungle and send forth a high, 

 thin penny-whistle of a sound on exactly E flat 

 above middle C, every sloth within hearing will 

 either answer or slowly and painfully begin to turn 

 in my direction. A half tone above or below will 

 be the same as silence to these creatures, and I 

 feel mentally the richer for knowing the utterly 

 useless fact of the exact master sound of the sloths. 

 Another type of achievement, perhaps not as 

 difficult, is to penetrate not only to the haunts in 

 general, but to the exact abode of a species or in- 

 dividual by forehand knowledge or by deduction 

 of a sight, sound, odor or the significance of some 

 particular habit, only indirectly connected with the 

 individuals sought. To such belonged the accom- 

 plishment of my desire for an adequate collection 

 of jungle water-beetles, when months of search had 

 revealed only two or three specimens. Amid the 

 jeers of my staff I planted dishpans and tubs here 

 and there in the heart of the tropical jungle, sank 

 them to a level with the ground, filled them with 



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