JUNGLE LIFE AT AREMU. 295 



We spent ten days at the Aremu Mine, and it speaks well 

 for the working possibilities of this region that I was able 

 to rise at five o'clock in the morning antl with intervals only 

 for meals, keep up steady work — exploring, photographing 

 and skinning until ten o'clock at night, when usually the 

 last skin would be rolled up or the last note written. I would 

 then tumble, happy and dead tired, into bed and know nothing 

 until the low signal of our Indian hunter summoned me in 

 the dusk of the following morning. I worked harder than 

 I ought to have done even in our northern countries and yet 

 felt no ill eft'ects. 



What impressed me chiefly in regard to the birds of this 

 region was, first the abundance, and second, the great variety. 

 In the course of the ten days of our stay, we identified 80 

 species of birds, and observed at least a full two hundred more 

 which we were unable to classify except as to family or genus. 

 Wishing to study the birds alive I refrained from shooting as 

 much as possible and chose to make this expedition rather 

 one of preparation in learning what tropical wood-craft I 

 could from an excellent Indian hunter, than of gathering a 

 collection and thereby a lengthy list of mere names. When, 

 sometime in the future, we return to this splendid field of 

 study and spend months in careful observation of some 

 such limited region, we may hope to add something of real 

 value to our knowledge of the ecology of these most inter- 

 esting forms of tropical life. We have the results of the 

 collector, par-excellence, in our museum cases of thousands 

 of tropical bird-skins. Now let us learn something of the 

 environment and life history of the living birds themselves. 



It is against my rule to write in diary form, but owing to 

 the limited time we spent at Aremu and the series of events, 

 some of which extended over two or three days, I have 

 made an exception in this case and will put down a few of 

 the incidents of jungle life in the order in which I observed 



