RESIDENCE AT TARAPOTO 45 
On the decHvities sloping to the Shillicaio and 
too steep for cultivation there are other trees of the 
primeval forest which flower along with the Ama- 
sisa, especially the Lupuna (Chorisia ventricosa), a 
Bombaceous tree with prickly trunk swollen above 
the base, producing abundance of large rose- 
coloured flowers, and a tree of moderate growth 
bearing large panicles of rather small white odori- 
ferous flowers (allied to Loganiaceae or Gentianeae). 
Some two months later a low spreading Bauhinia, 
abundant on the rocky margin of the stream, 
appears every morning sprinkled with large white 
flowers resembling a Prince's feather in form. 
I know not at what hour they open, but it is 
certainly before daylight, as I always see them fully 
expanded at earliest dawn. A Capparis which 
often grows near it has large white inodorous 
flowers which begin to open at sunset, and at 
daybreak the stamens and petals are falling away. 
It flowers more or less all the year round, and the 
Bauhinia does not go out of flower for full eight 
months.-^ 
Tarapoto is situated in a large pampa or plain 
sufficient to render them inaccessible, it hangs them on the very points of the 
outermost twigs. All the species of troopial I have seen on the Amazon and 
Rio Negro show similar foresight in selecting a place where to rear their 
infant colonies ; and the robber who, observing no impediment from below, 
ventures to climb to their eyrie finds to his cost that it is defended by some 
large wasps' nest, or by hordes of stinging ants. 
^ [It is interesting to note how often Spruce mentions white flowers as 
night-blooming, but these two cases are especially interesting because one 
opens in the evening, the other apparently during the night or long before 
dawn. This accords with the fact, communicated to me by Mr. K. Jordan of 
the Tring Museum, that their moth-collector in South America has found that 
besides the species of moths that come to light or to flowers in the evening and 
principally up to about midnight, there are other species which only appear 
probably an hour or so before dawn till near sunrise. Presumably these latter 
moths are those which fertilise these early flowering white -blossomed trees 
and shrubs observed by Spruce. — A. R. W.] 
