JUNGLE LIFE 87 



Or I could put my Indians to chopping down some of the 

 great trees, and after hours of labor, if no interfering trees 

 or binding lianas set all our work at naught, I could search 

 among the mass of broken, bruised foliage, an almost hope- 

 less task, for casual specimens. And what I found might 

 often have been brushed down from the mid- jungle, or have 

 been disturbed among the very leaves of the ground. 



With my shot bird in my hand and my black silhouettes 

 and my scattering of crushed specimens, I was very far from 

 real knowledge of tree-top life. What of the tree-frogs, and 

 butterflies and birds and unknown hosts of creatures which 

 never voluntarily descend to the ground. There awaits a 

 rich harvest for the naturalist who overcomes the obstacles 

 gravitation, ants, thorns, rotten trunks, and mounts to 

 the summits of the jungle trees. Another year we hope to 

 begin this work, and to sit in hammocks or on platforms 

 swung aloft among the toucans, macaws, parrots and ca- 

 ciques, the umbrella, the calf and the bellbirds whose strange 

 distant notes or whose dead bodies were merely tantalizing 

 invitations to the manifold secrets which intimate observation 

 among the tree- tops is certain to reveal. 



To show the stratified activities of a few typical groups 

 of jungle birds and mammals, I have prepared the following 

 rough diagram: 



Ground Low Jungle Mid Jungle 



(0-20 feet) (20-70 feet) 



Partridges Trumpeters Curassows Barbets 



Tinamou Antbirds Guans Jacamars 



Manakins Pigeons Puffbirds 



Wrens Hawks Goldbirds 



Thrushes Owls Mourners 



Motmots Honey-creepers 



Trogons 



Tree-tops (70-200 feet) 



Cotingas Macaws Parrakeets etc., etc. 



Toucans Parrots Giant Caciques 



