ORNITHOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES 221 



overlaid larger spots of greyish purple and lilac. The meas- 

 urements were 26.5 x 19 mm. 



GUIANA TYRANTLET 



Tyranniscus acer (Salv. & God.) 



I had returned from a hard walk in search of trumpeter 

 chicks in vain, and had been straightway recompensed by 

 the discovery of the nest of a sunbittern, and the flat plat- 

 form and single white egg of a splendid pigeon. The day's 

 work seemed ended, and I lay on my back waiting for the 

 dugout to return from a trip up river. Idly I watched a 

 tiny bird a flycatcher flitting about high overhead, in the 

 very summit of a mango tree. Presently it dived into a 

 bunch of moss, one of a dozen on some dead branches, but 

 did not immediately appear again. I waited and still it 

 remained invisible. From a condition of lazy inattentive- 

 ness, I sat up, imbued with concentrated interest, and felt 

 for my glasses, my eyes never leaving the tuft of moss. The 

 closest scrutiny revealed nothing, and I was half tempted 

 to believe that the bird had eluded me. But the insatiable, 

 inexplicable will-to-learn, the fluid life, as Bergson would 

 have it, overcame the sloth of the material body, and up I 

 went. I climbed swiftly, so that I might keep beyond the 

 ever-increasing area of irate ants, and finally touched the 

 branch. My flycatcher shot out, and raising his diminutive 

 crest, scolded me roundly for my unwarranted intrusion. 

 The nest was most ingeniously hidden and I could not find 

 the entrance until I had carried it to the ground and exam- 

 ined it carefully. The owner was a Guiana tyrantlet, one 

 of the most inconspicuous of his great flycatcher family, and 

 one of the smallest, less than four inches in length. He was 

 olive and grey, with his wing feathers touched with yellow; 

 and his voice was sharp, unmelodious, and several sizes too 

 large. 



