300 OUR SEARCH FOR A WILDERNESS. 



It was attached to the extremity of a long, slender bush- 

 thread dangling from a great distance above. There was 

 not a breath of air and the secret of the circling motion — 

 the nest moving irregularly in an ellipse of about ten feet — 

 was not solved until with my glasses I made out a small 

 monkey — a marmoset apparently — clinging to a branch 

 near where the bush-thread started. The little creature had 

 found some store of food in a hollow or crevice of the bark. 

 To get his hand in, he was compelled to push aside the dang- 

 ling curtain of aerial root-threads, and this occasional motion 

 was enough to send the end, far below, sailing around in a 

 large circle. 



As I resumed my seat, a great beede, like a polished emer- 

 ald, alighted close beside me, — not heavy and blundering, 

 like a June-bug or scarab, but nervous, flicking its wings 

 wasp-like, ready at an instant's alarm to whirr away as swiftly 

 as light. A beautifully marked Longicorn beetle buzzed 

 past and alighted ten feet up a sapling, leaving me eying it 

 enviously, atremble with all my boyhood's collecting ardor. 

 Heliconias sailed slowly past and one of the beautiful trans- 

 parent jungle butterflies alighted at my feet, with only a few 

 dots of azure revealing the position of the wings. White and 

 yellow butterflies floated high in air, where a hundred kinds 

 of flowers flashed out among the green foliage. 



Lizards were abundant in this little clearing, slipping along 

 fallen trees with sudden rushes and halts, or tearing madly 

 after each other with loud rustlings through the fallen leaves. 

 Some were beautifully colored, splashed with blue, orange and 

 green; while other dark ones had a network of delicate light 

 lines crossing the back, cutting the creatures up into like- 

 nesses of small lichened leaves. 



When the sun shone out brightly, two or three minute 

 midges danced before my eyes — otherwise I was free from 

 the " insect scourges " of the tropics! 



