116 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



most service; but he hardly seems even to have seen the 

 animals with which the hunter is fairly familiar. His in- 

 terests, and those of the other biologists of his kind, lay 

 in other directions. In consequence, in treating of the life- 

 histories of the very interesting big game, we have been 

 largely forced to rely either on native report, in which 

 acutely accurate observation is invariably mixed with wild 

 fable, or else on the chance remarks of travellers or mere 

 sportsmen, who had not the training to make them under- 

 stand even what it was desirable to observe. Nowadays 

 there is a growing proportion of big-game hunters, of sports- 

 men, who are of the Schilling, Selous, and Shiras type. 

 These men do work of capital value for science. The mere 

 big-game butcher is tending to disappear as a type. On the 

 other hand, the big-game hunter who is a good observer, 

 a good field naturalist, occupies at present a more impor- 

 tant position than ever before, and it is now recognized that 

 he can do work which the closet naturalist cannot do. The 

 big-game hunter of this type and the outdoors, faunal nat- 

 uralist, the student of the life-histories of big mammals, 

 have open to them in South America a wonderful field in 

 which to work. 



The fire-ants, of which I have above spoken, are gen- 

 erally found on a species of small tree or sapling, with a 

 greenish trunk. They bend the whole body as they bite, 

 the tail and head being thrust downward. A few seconds 

 after the bite the poison causes considerable pain; later 

 it may make a tiny festering sore. There is certainly the 

 most extraordinary diversity in the traits by which nature 

 achieves the perpetuation of species. Among the warrior 

 and predaceous insects the prowess is in some cases of such 



