^48 JUNGLE PEACE 



The plants of the jungle won success either 

 by elbowing their neighbors and fighting their 

 path up to sunlight, or else by adapting their 

 needs to the starvation meed of air and light 

 allotted to the lowly growths. The big-leaved 

 churacas had found another means of existence. 

 They lived like permanent rockets, bursting in 

 mid-air. A long, curved stem shot up and 

 reached far out into space. It was so slender 

 as to be almost invisible in the dim light. At 

 its tip radiated a great burst of foliage, leaves 

 springing out in all directions, and absorbing 

 nutrition which a sapling growing amid the 

 undergrowth could not possibly do. 



From daybreak to dark the canella tree was 

 seldom deserted. Usually a score or more birds 

 fluttered and fed among its branches, and true 

 to tropic laws, there were comparatively few 

 individuals but a multitude of species. In the 

 few hours I was able to devote to its study, I 

 identified seventy-six different kinds, and to- 

 gether with those which I saw but could not 

 name, I judge that more than a hundred species 

 must have come to the berries during that week 

 in early May. The first day I secured sixteen 

 specimens, all different; and the following day 



