CHAPTER X 



METHODS OF RESEARCH 



To settle down in a strange country and to study suc- 

 cessfully the wild creatures which inhabit it, demands a few 

 of the elements of real warfare, combined, however, with a 

 large percentage of luck, the chances of a gamble. But this 

 last comprises, after all, much of the formula of all organic 

 research, the factor which imbues it with the peculiar fas- 

 cination absent from more mathematically precise phases of 

 work. 



With steel traps, guns and cartridges, nets and seines, 

 there is no difficulty in accumulating a host of dead and 

 captive specimens, but this any professional collector could 

 do, and do better, than we. We had to contend with the 

 problems concerned in discovering, watching and finally, if 

 necessary, securing dead or alive, certain definite species or 

 groups of organisms. And this was a very different matter, 

 and of all places difficult here in the tropics, where a single 

 glimpse of a certain species might be all that was vouch- 

 safed for many months. 



In studying any one group we found it necessary to 

 work out correlated associations with other phases of life, 

 or to watch meteorological conditions. Certain insects 

 emerged only immediately after heavy afternoon rains. If 

 we wished to find birds such as fork-tailed flycatchers during 

 the molting season, we carried the sequence of events one 

 link farther. After heavy rain we searched for a flight of 

 termites in the open, and there we were certain to find the 

 birds. To depend on indirect signs became almost second 

 nature. 



Were we desirous of learning the alarm note of the 

 white-fronted antcatcher? That spry little bird of the jun- 



