BIRD LIFE OF BARTICA 119 



rock and the rich wine-colored pompadour cotingas. About 

 Bartica the Indians are too busy working cassava or getting 

 sourie nuts or fishing, to pay much attention to unnecessary 

 decoration. 



As food, the birds of Guiana form an important item 

 in the dietary of the Indians or indeed of anyone living in 

 or travelling through the interior. During four months of 

 one period of work at Kalacoon House, one Indian with a 

 double-barrelled, twenty-eight gauge shotgun easily kept 

 us in meat, and meat which to our palate was far superior 

 to the supplies which at first we had sent up from George- 

 town. He worked in a radius of only a mile or two, and 

 yet seemed to make no impression on the amount of game 

 still present in this area. Sixty per cent of this game con- 

 sisted of birds, of which tinamou, curassows, guans and 

 trumpeters formed the chief items, these birds being better 

 known colonially by the names of maams, powies, maroudis 

 and warracabras. Among the mammals the most valuable 

 for food were deer, peccaries, monkeys, tapirs and pacas; 

 agoutis or accouris are the rabbits of the tropical jungles. 

 After we had shot over fifty in this limited district their num- 

 bers seemed to be as great as ever. Keeping in mind the care- 

 fully preserved shooting grounds of our Eastern States, the 

 elaborate licenses, the delicately estimated head of game al- 

 lowed to each hunter, it seemed too good to be true, to find 

 in the world, only a possible eight days from New York, such 

 an unspoiled hunting ground, with enough and to spare. The 

 game hog is unknown, as there is no market for his ill-gotten 

 wares. We never wasted a single specimen. Besides its 

 flesh for the mess, each bird was weighed, measured, exam- 

 ined for molt and parasites, skinned, sexed and its food re- 

 corded, and whenever desired, parts of the skeleton and soft 

 anatomy preserved. Surely no killed specimens more fully 

 fulfilled their destiny of usefulness to man ! The flesh kept 

 us in good health, and the entrails went to feed our captive 

 animals and birds of prey. 



