A WILDERNESS LABORATORY 149 



high overhead. Our progress was thus through 

 a glorified tunnel; we traveled molewise with 

 only here and there a glimpse of the sky. Every 

 walk was filled to the brim for me with that 

 infinitely satisfying joy, derived from frank, 

 sympathetic communion with an enthusiastic, 

 true friend. I know of no earthly pleasure 

 more to be desired. Perhaps this is because 

 friends are so rare with whom one can be wholly 

 natural, with one's guard completely down, un- 

 afraid of any misunderstanding — an omni- 

 mental communion. 



It was with dismay, at the end of one long 

 walk, that I realized we had forgotten to search 

 for the tropical creatures for which we had 

 presumably set out. We had kept the jungle 

 birds and animals well at distance by a con- 

 stant flow of human speech — argumentative, 

 eulogistic, condemnatory — of literary and field 

 and museum doings of the scientific world. 



But we did not wholly neglect the life around 

 us and one of the last problems which we solved 

 that day was that of a small voice, one of those 

 apparently vmattached sounds which come from 

 no definite place, nor are referable to any cer- 

 tain source. It might have been a cicada or 



