A JUNGLE CLEARING 53 



this glowing hue, except for its chin and throat, 

 which were a limpid amaranth purple; and the 

 effect on the excited rods and cones in one's eyes 

 was like the power of great music or some majes- 

 tic passage in the Bible. You, who think my 

 similes are overdone, search out in the nearest 

 museum the dustiest of purple-throated cotingas, 

 Cotinga cayana, and then, instead, berate me 

 for inadequacy. 



Sheer color alone is powerful enough, but when 

 heightened by contrast, it becomes still more ef- 

 fective, and I seemed to have secured, with two 

 barrels, a cotinga and its shadow. The latter was 

 also a full-grown male cotinga, known to a few 

 people in this world as the dark-breasted mourner 

 (Lipaugus simplex). In general shape and 

 form it was not unlike its cousin, but in color it 

 was its shadow, its silhouette. Not a feather 

 upon head or body, wings or tail showed a hint of 

 warmth, only a dull uniform gray; an ash of a 

 bird, living in the same warm sunlight, wet by 

 the same rain, feeding on much the same food, 

 and claiming relationship with a blazing-feath- 

 ered turquoise. There is some very exact and 

 very absorbing reason for all this, and for it I 

 search with fervor, but with little success. But 



