120 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



ideal place In which a field naturalist could spend six 

 months or a year. It is readily accessible, it offers an al- 

 most virgin field for work, and the life would be healthy 

 as well as delightfully attractive. The man should have 

 a steam-launch. In it he could with comfort cover all 

 parts of the country from south of Coimbra to north of 

 Cuyaba and Caceres. There would have to be a good deal 

 of collecting (although nothing in the nature of butchery 

 should be tolerated), for the region has only been superfi- 

 cially worked, especially as regards mammals. But if the 

 man were only a collector he would leave undone the part 

 of the work best worth doing. The region offers extraor- 

 dinary opportunities for the study of the life-histories of 

 birds which, because of their size, their beauty, or their 

 habits, are of exceptional interest. All kinds of problems 

 would be worked out. For example, on the morning of the 

 3d, as we were ascending the Paraguay, we again and again 

 saw in the trees on the bank big nests of sticks, into and 

 out of which parakeets were flying by the dozen. Some 

 of them had straws or twigs in their bills. In some of the 

 big globular nests we could make out several holes of exit 

 or entrance. Apparently these parakeets were building or 

 remodelling communal nests; but whether they had them- 

 selves built these nests, or had taken old nests and added 

 to or modified them, we could not tell. There was so much 

 of interest all along the banks that we were continually 

 longing to stop and spend days where we were. Mixed 

 flocks of scores of cormorants and darters covered certain 

 trees, both at sunset and after sunrise. Although there 

 was no deep forest, merely belts or fringes of trees along 

 the river, or in patches back of it, we frequently saw mon- 



