276 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



to guess I would probably have considered the 

 author a longicorn beetle or some fiddling or- 

 thopter. 



Now, a year later, I suddenly stopped twenty 

 yards away, for at the end of the silvery cadence 

 of a woodhewer, I heard the low, measured, tone- 

 less rhythm which instantly revived to mind every 

 detail of the clearing. I was headed toward a 

 distant palm frond beneath whose tip was a nest 

 of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two 

 atoms of hummingbirds at the moment when they 

 rolled from their petit pois egg-shells. I gave 

 this up for the day and turned up the hill, where 

 fifty feet away was the stump and bush near 

 which I had sat and watched. Three times I 

 went past the place before I could be certain, 

 and even at the last I identified it only by the 

 relative position of the giant tauroneero tree, in 

 which I had shot many cotingas. The stump was 

 there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices, 

 leaking sawdust like an overloved doll — but the 

 low shrub had become a tall sapling, the weeds — 

 vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf — all had been topped 

 and killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and 

 shrubs, which a year before had not raised a leaf 

 above the meadow level. The old vistas were 



