276 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
to guess I would probably have considered the 
author a longicorn beetle or some fiddling or- 
thopter. 
Now, a year later, I suddenly stopped twenty 
yards away, for at the end of the silvery cadence 
of a woodhewer, I heard the low, measured, tone- 
less rhythm which instantly revived to mind every 
detail of the clearing. I was headed toward a 
distant palm frond beneath whose tip was a nest 
of Rufous Hermits, for I wished to see the two 
atoms of hummingbirds at the moment when they 
rolled from their petit pois egg-shells. I gave 
this up for the day and turned up the hill, where 
fifty feet away was the stump and bush near 
which I had sat and watched. Three times I 
went past the place before I could be certain, 
and even at the last I identified it only by the 
relative position of the giant tauroneero tree, in 
which I had shot many cotingas. The stump was 
there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices, 
leaking sawdust like an overloved doll—but the 
low shrub had become a tall sapling, the weeds— 
vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf—all had been topped 
and killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and 
shrubs, which a year before had not raised a leaf 
above the meadow level. The old vistas were 
