ECUADOR 221 
for long, as we got the loan of a charcoal-burner’s hut about 
four hundred feet above Lloa on a steep hill overlooking the 
valley and facing Mount Pichincha. 
Apropos of fleas, a botanist friend who had traveled in Peru, 
where the railway reaches a height of over fifteen thousand feet, 
once told me he could tell more or less when the train had reached 
around twelve thousand feet as the fleas, unable to stand the alti- 
tude, all “popped.” Either the Ecuadorian fleas were of stronger 
stock or we were not quite high enough at Lloa, for there was 
unfortunately no inclination on the part of the fleas to pop until 
pressed incredibly tightly between the fingers. 
At eleven thousand five hundred feet we were in the temperate 
zone and the countryside was frequently enveloped in a cold mist. 
The nights were particularly cold and anything less like the 
tropical conditions usually met with on the equator it would be 
difficult to imagine. In this region humming-birds were particu- 
larly plentiful, and it was an extraordinary sight to look out of 
the hut at daybreak when one’s limbs were stiff with cold to see 
numbers of the fragile-looking Thornbill Humming-birds flitting 
round the flowers through the cold gray mist in the most ani- 
mated manner. Other humming-birds common at this altitude 
were Bouquet’s Puff-legs, and a charming sight they were with 
their white “powder-puffs” displayed prominently on the legs. 
It is a common belief that humming-birds are attracted only to 
red flowers, but in this region nearly all the different species were 
feeding on white blossoms. 
After much searching I came across a Sword-billed Humming- 
bird, a bird which I was particularly anxious to capture owing to 
its very unusual proportions. The beak is considerably longer than 
the body, and it feeds almost entirely on the trumpet-shaped flowers 
of the scarlet brugmansia. These blooms are about the same length 
or a little longer than the bird’s beak, and it seems that the Sword- 
bill has evolved a bill (and tongue) sufficiently long to enable it to 
feed quite easily from its favorite food-plant. During six weeks of 
strenuous mountaineering I captured five of these rare birds, but 
was unable to find a suitable artificial diet for their sustenance. 
The usual proprietary infants’ food mixed with condensed milk 
