:::r.:::»:g TWO BIRD- LOVERS IN MEXICO xfe""."" 



The authors of all this uproar soon made their ap- 

 pearance, a small flock of dark, fowl-like birds, which 

 we recognized as Chachalacas. They flew from tree to 

 tree, or ran frantically round and round in circles upon 

 the ground, uttering screams and the strange hum- 

 ming cries, but no sound l)earing a resemblance to the 

 clear, rinsfino- cha'-cha-lac ! with which we were famil- 

 iar in captive birds. The other performers in this 

 strange chorus were perched high in the trees, a quar- 

 tet of Laughing Falcons, which easily held their own. 

 Such awful shrieks of mirth were never fashioned by 

 human tlu-oats, and the weirdness of it all, breaking so 

 unexpectedly upon the silence of the jungle, made it 

 all the more startling. 



Before we reached camp we were able to add the 

 Collared Peccary to our list. Three of these wild 

 pigs snorted in alarm, as we ap])roached a glade, where 

 tlie underbrush thinned out. They peered at us 

 with their queer little eyes, and, with frantic grunts, 

 thev tore ott as fast as their sliort legs could carry 

 them. 



We heard rumours of large blackish Osos (the native 

 word for bear) in the low mountains to the north of 

 us, in Jalisco, and I obtained tlie tooth of a bear 

 from a native hunter. Another Indian had the tiny 

 horns of a deer, shot in the state of Michoacan, a little 

 distance to the south. Tlie deer was described as very 

 small, and always as having unbranched horns. I could 



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