FLASHLIGHT OF WO NOCTURNAL RAILS THAT USED THE DRY CREEK BOTTOM WHERE 
THE FLASH WAS SET 
Like the opossums, they fired it repeatedly, 1 
or 
fired by a marsupial. In several instances 
the flash was sprung by a species of night 
rail, other times by large rats or flying 
bats (see page 176), and not infrequently 
by decaying vegetation dropping from 
the forest tops. 
In the daytime the ever-present buz- 
zard soon associated the green tin boxes 
covering the cameras with a near - by 
feast and it became necessary to set the 
flash just at dusk whenever meat bait was 
used (see page 177). 
But worst of all was the extreme hu- 
midity, so that plates left exposed in the 
camera for more than two nights and de- 
veloped at irregular periods became so 
mildewed as to be worthless. 
A PANIC-STRICKEN JAGUAR 
In one instance the flash fired by a 
jaguar, at a considerable distance from 
the house-boat, was visited too late to 
save the plate, and all I had for the effort 
was the sight of the clawed bank caused 
vulling on the string whether baited with fruit 
meat 
by the big animal as it sprang away in 
terror when the dazzling, booming flash 
greeted an effort to carry off the skinned 
body of an opossum, while the same re- 
sult occurred in the case of a tapir pass- 
ing along a runway to the water. 
Moisture - absorbing chemicals in the 
camera would have overcome this, but 
none were at hand when most needed. 
Undoubtedly flashlight photography is 
the ideal way of getting pictures of the 
larger - sized) South American animals, 
where, aside from their being almost 
wholly nocturnal, the dense brush pre- 
vents any possibility of daylight pictures 
unless such animals can be cornered or 
treed by the use of hounds. 
That the jaguar occasionally hunts in 
the daytime was shown when Mr. An- 
thony, shortly after leaving the house- 
boat, had a big boar peccary nearly knock 
him over as he was standing scanning the 
tree-tops for a shot at a squirrel. He 
fired at it with small shot, rolling it over 
