ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



1371 



KALACOON LABORATORY 

 View from the East 



and a score of other kindnesses, words fail to 

 express adequate appreciation. We prefer to 

 feel that the gift is one to science^ which we, 

 the benefiters, can repay only by the hardest, 

 most sincere work of investigation of which we 

 are capable. 



Kalacoon is a very large, two-storied house 

 built on a rather abrupt hill, some two hundred 

 feet above the Mazaruni River. The labora- 

 torj room, on pillars fifteen feet above the 

 ground, is thirty by sixty feet with sixteen 

 windows. Two miles below the house the 

 Mazaruni enters the equally large Essequibo; 

 while the mouth of the Cuyuni River is the 

 same distance above. Kalacoon faces north- 

 east, and the view from the front is magnificent. 

 All three rivers are visible, together with nine 

 islands. To the east lies the rubber plantation 

 of Mr. Withers, and across the river the tiny 

 group of compact, attractive buildings of the 

 Government Rest House and the Penal Settle- 

 ment. Beyond these and toward all other 

 points of the compass, solid jungle covers the 

 rolling: hills. 



No more central sjDot could be found, nor 

 one more delicately balanced between the abso- 

 lute primitive wilderness and those comforts of 

 civilization which mean continual health and 

 the abilitv to use body and brain to the full. 

 Three times a week a little steamer brings ice, 

 fresh vegetables and mail. We can reach 

 Georgetown in five minutes by telegraph and 

 New York half an hour later by cable, while 

 the steamer trip to Georgetown takes only 

 seven hours. Yet no one, save an occasional 

 government official, a tent-boat of negro gold- 

 diggers, or the wood-skin of an Indian, passes 

 us. Our Indian hunter finds an abundance of 

 meat for the table within a mile or two of the 

 house, and I was recentl}^ charged by a jaguar 

 only a few hundred j^ards away. I shall re- 

 serve for other articles an account of the com- 

 mon creatures which surround us. The short- 

 est walk often furnishes material for days of 

 research. For longer expeditions we have 

 launches at our disposal for ascending the 

 rivers to the rapids and falls, while Mr. 

 Wither's motor car climbs the most impossible 

 hills and finds its waj^ along trails which other- 



