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ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



ANOTHEK VIEW OF KALACOON LABORATORY 



wise are traversed only by naked Akawai and 

 Carib Indian hunters. 



For those who think of the tropics as a place 

 of constant danger and disease, I may say that 

 mosquitoes and flies, malaria and other fevers 

 are absent. A cool breeze blows most of the 

 day; the temperature var3ang from 68° to 93°. 

 At night a heavy blanket is a necessity. A few 

 poisonous snakes are to be found, but only after 

 long searching. I have seen two in two months. 

 A lantern, turned low, keeps away the vam- 

 pires, and while bete rouge are annoying they 

 are easily guarded against. Under such con- 

 ditions it is possible, as we are proving, to work 

 hard day after day, month after month, and 

 remain unpoisoned, unbitten and in good 

 health. 



The one, terrible disadvantage, the one thing 

 which no planning or finance or forethought 

 can alter, is the pitifulh^ inadequate ability of 

 each of our human brains to cope properly 

 with a tithe of the specimens which accumulate, 

 or to understand and translate into logical ex- 

 planation more than the merest fraction of the 

 mass of strange facts and phenomena which fill 

 our minds and note-books. 



NOOSING A BUSHMASTER. 

 By William Beebe. 



OUR Akawai Indian hunter, two nestling 

 trogons and Easter eve — these things led 

 to the capture of the Master of the 

 Bush. For nothing in the tropics is direct, 

 jjremeditated. 



My thoughts were far from poisonous ser- 

 pents when Jeremiah came into our Guiana 

 laboratory late on a Saturday afternoon. Out- 

 doors he had deposited the coarser game in- 

 tended for the mess, today, consisting of a 

 small deer, a tinamou or maam and two 

 agoutis. But now with his quiet smile, he held 

 out his lesser booty, which he always brought 

 in to me, offering in his slender, effeminate 

 hands his contribution to science. Usually this 

 was a bird of brilliant plumage, or a nestful 

 of maam's eggs with shells like great spheres 

 of burnished emeralds. These he would carry 

 in a basket so cunningly woven from a single 

 palm frond that it shared our interest in its 

 contents. To-day, he presented two nestling 

 trogons, and this was against rules. For we 



