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 simpler). 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 
