CHAPTER VI 



THE JUNGLE AND ITS LIFE 



Three popular misconceptions exist in regard to trop- 

 ical jungles: 



First, that the heat and dangers are excessive. 



Second, that animal life is scanty or almost absent. 



Third, that "eternal summer" reigns. 



In our homes in the North we glean these idles fixees 

 from travelogues written at second hand or censored with 

 an idea to continuous and intensive sensation. Indeed, it 

 is not surprising that the tropical jungles should be thought 

 so unhealthy and barren, for the people who live just with- 

 out their borders hold the same beliefs. The native of the 

 city of Georgetown who has not visited the "bush" deems 

 it to be filled with serpents and noisome fevers, while he who 

 has been up country will still tell you that the jungle is all 

 but devoid of life. 



Without further preamble I would like thus early in 

 this volume to emphasize the falsity of these erroneous, 

 world-wide ideas, speaking from many years of experience 

 in tropical jungles; in general of India, Ceylon, Malasia, 

 Borneo, South China and Mexico, and in particular of the 

 jungle or bush of British Guiana. 



First, the heat of the jungle is not oppressive even at 

 high noon. The difference between bearable, even comfort- 

 able temperature, and the gasping point of altitude of the 

 thermometer quicksilver, is exactly that between shadow and 

 sunshine. 



It was full noon when one day in May I seated myself 

 on a fallen log at the very edge of the jungle which I had 

 chosen for intensive study. I was wholly in shadow, but I 

 could reach my hand out into full sunlight. My thermometer 



