HEADWATERS OF THE PARAGUAY 97 



archaic type, with spurred wings, rather short bills, and 

 no especial affinities with other modern birds. In one 

 meadow by a pond we saw three marsh-deer, a buck and 

 two does. They stared at us, with their thickly haired 

 tails raised on end. These tails are black underneath, 

 instead of white as in our whitetail deer. One of the 

 vagaries of the ultraconcealing-colorationists has been to 

 uphold the (incidentally quite preposterous) theory that 

 the tail of our deer is colored white beneath so as to har- 

 monize with the sky and thereby mislead the cougar or 

 wolf at the critical moment when it makes its spring; but 

 this marsh-deer shows a black instead of a white flag, and 

 yet has just as much need of protection from its enemies, 

 the jaguar and the cougar. In South America conceal- 

 ing coloration plays no more part in the lives of the adult 

 deer, the tamandua, the tapir, the peccary, the jaguar, and 

 the puma than it plays in Africa in the lives of such ani- 

 mals as the zebra, the sable antelope, the wildebeeste, the 

 lion, and the hunting hyena. 



Next day we spent ascending the Sao Lourenco. It was 

 narrower than the Paraguay, naturally, and the swirling 

 brown current was, if anything, more rapid. The strange 

 tropical trees, standing densely on the banks, were matted 

 together by long bush ropes lianas, or vines, some very 

 slender and very long. Sometimes we saw brilliant red or 

 blue flowers, or masses of scarlet berries on a queer palm- 

 like tree, or an array of great white blossoms on a much 

 larger tree. In a lagoon bordered by the taquara bamboo 

 a school of big otters were playing; when they came to 

 the surface, they opened their mouths like seals, and made 

 a loud hissing noise. The crested screamers, dark gray 



