216 THE ODYSSEY OF AN ANIMAL COLLECTOR 
found as far north as the Galapagos Islands, which lie three hun- 
dred miles due east of Ecuador right on the equator. 
Guayaquil is unusual, if not unique, in that it boasts of a rail- 
way station with no railway. The building, ticket office, and lug- 
gage office are there, but passengers find that after settling the 
usual formalities they board a ferry which takes them over the 
river to the waiting train. Our destination was Quito the capital, 
three hundred miles away by rail and lying at an altitude of nearly 
ninety-five hundred feet. The line for the first fifty miles traverses 
the flat coastal belt, then winds its way up the western slopes of 
the Andes to a height of twelve thousand feet, after which it 
descends to the plateau in which Quito is situated. 
The Andes cross Ecuador from north to south, leaving only a 
narrow strip of flat country between them and the Pacific, and 
every kind of climate exists from desert, tropical (humid), sub- 
tropical (humid and dry), temperate (humid and dry), to the 
alpine regions of the great mountains which are perpetually cov- 
ered with snow. In this respect Ecuador can boast of the fact that 
it has snow on the equator. This extraordinary variety of climate 
with its corresponding types of vegetation make this part of the 
New World the most prolific in bird-life, and its inaccessibility to 
the ordinary traveler rather adds to the excitement of exploring 
the numerous mountains and valleys where bird-life is extremely 
local. 
The Andes, on account of their great height, create a natural 
division in the animal-life, and so we find about four hundred 
species and sub-species of birds in eastern Ecuador that are not 
found on the western side, and nearly two hundred in the west 
that do not occur in the east. The very size of some of the families 
is sufficient to indicate a number of distinct zones: there are, for 
instance, 132 species and 16 sub-species of humming-birds (many 
more than in the whole of Brazil); but this enormous total is 
beaten by the tyrants, which number 142 species and 18 sub- 
species. Altogether there are 1,357 species and 151 sub-species of 
birds in Eucador, in an area less than that of Germany! 
Quito is a delightful place with a temperature averaging 60°F. 
We were immediately struck by the smartness of the Spanish 
women and Delys had a grand time exploring the shops, especially 
