Down an Unknown River 295 



of a warbler, jet-black, with white under-surfaces of the 

 wings and tail, white on the tail-feathers, and a large spot 

 of white on the back, normally almost concealed, the 

 feathers on the back being long and fluffy. When he 

 shot the bird, a male, it was showing off before a dull- 

 colored little bird, doubtless the female; and the chief 

 feature of the display was this white spot on the back. 

 The white feathers were raised and displayed so that 

 the spot flashed like the "chrysanthemum" on a prong- 

 buck whose curiosity has been aroused. In the gloom of 

 the forest the bird was hard to see, but the flashing of 

 this patch of white feathers revealed it at once, attract- 

 ing immediate attention. It was an excellent example 

 of a coloration mark' which served a purely advertising 

 purpose; apparently it was part of a courtship display. 

 The bird was about thirty feet up in the branches. 



In the morning, just before leaving this camp, a tapir 

 swam across stream a little way above us ; but unfortu- 

 nately we could not get a shot at it. An ample supply of 

 tapir beef would have meant much to us. We had started 

 with fifty days' rations ; but this by no means meant full 

 rations, in the sense of giving every man all he wanted 

 to eat. We had two meals a day, and were on rather 

 short commons — ^both our mess and the camaradas' — 

 except when we got plenty of palm-tops. For our mess 

 we had the boxes chosen by Fiala, each containing a day's 

 rations for six men, our number. But we made each box 

 last a day and a half, or at times two days, and in addi- 

 tion we gave some of the food to the camaradas. It was 

 only on the rare occasions when we had killed some 

 monkeys or curassows, or caught some fish, that every- 



