24 BULLETIN 117, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



hacienda, Don Carlos Duque, informed me that as late as twenty years ago several 

 species of large curi-asows, guans, parrots, tinamous, and other tropical birds, were 

 to be found in the scrubby or bush country in the vicinity, but that constant shooting 

 by villagers had exterminated them. (PI. 9.) 



Heller Expedition, October 25, 1915; Chapman Expedition, July 

 11-14, 1916; 116 specimens of 37 species. 



7(2ma (altitude 5,000 feet, Subtropical Zone). — The hacienda of 

 Idma, some 9 miles southwest of Santa Ana and 1,500 feet above it 

 is in the humid subtropics. Traces of forest first appear at an eleva- 

 tion of 4,200 feet, but the floor of the valley has long been deforested 

 and is largely devoted to the growing of sugar cane. The steeply 

 ascending mountains are heavily wooded from the valley to their 

 summits, and a short distance above the hacienda, where our camp 

 was made, the country is everyv/here forested. The fauna is typically 

 subtropical and closely resembles that of the Urubamba Canyon 

 above San Miguel Bridge. Kalinowski collected at Idma chiefly in 

 July, August, October, and November, 1894, seeming representa- 

 tives of 75 species.^^ 



Mr. Heller's notes on Idma follow: 



Idma is without doubt one of the rainiest jjlaces in all Peru. Thei'e is scarcely a 

 day throughout the whole year in which some rain does not fall at this spot. Such, 

 conditions, however, are very local and due largely to the high forested ranges which 

 overhang the hacienda of Idma. A league or two lower down the valley, toward 

 Santa Ana, the sun holds sway half of the year at least part of each day. The un- 

 fortunate inhabitants of Idma have daily vistas of sunshine lower down the valley 

 thi'ough the very raindrops that give this place its distinction. The altitude at 

 the hacienda is 5,000 feet. The temperature is seldom disagreeably warm in the day- 

 time and at night it is comfortably cool so the climate, barring its wetness, may be 

 described as delightfully semi tropical. 



Originally the slopes and floor of the valley were occupied by a heavy forest which 

 was removed centuries ago by the Incas. Within a stone's tlirow of the cultivated 

 fields above the hacienda the dark primeval forest sweeps down from the range above 

 and beyond. Idma is a cultivated nook of valley projecting into the great forest and 

 maintained only by constant strife with the forces of nature. 



Heller Expedition, October 10-23, 1915; Chapman Expedition, 

 July 11-14, 1916; 239 specimens of 72 species. 



Rio San Miguel (altitude 4,400 feet, humid Tropical Zone). — One 

 of Heller's collecting stations at the upper margin of the humid 

 Tropical Zone. It is described b}^^ him as follows: 



Our introduction to the lowland forest of the Amazon basin took place at San Fer- 

 nando, which is situated on the upper borders in the hill country at the foot of the 

 Andean Cordillera. The geographical position of this spot is some ten leagues north- 

 west of the village of Lucma from which it is separated by a high, cold spur of the 

 Andes in which the headwaters of the Rio Cosireni take their rise. San Fernando is 

 situated well down' in the drainage area of this river at 4,400 feet altitude in the valley 

 of a tributary stream, the Rio San Miguel, a few miles above its junction with the Rio 

 Pampaconas. The spot to which the name San Fernando is attached is marked by a 

 single hut in the neighborhood of which sugar cane, cassava, coffee, ground nuts, pine- 



»2 Omis, 1913, pp. 73-102. 



