ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
63 
own village, Villers-Br etonneux, destroyed in 
the last war! The old man, who has been in 
Guyana for thirty-five years, is so delighted to 
see a member of my family that he weeps! 
In Venezuela, most of my live birds had been 
caught with birdlime. In French Guyana I en¬ 
gage a few convicts who make a profession of 
catching and stuffing birds. They know per¬ 
fectly well when and where the different birds 
can be found, and they knock them down with 
blow-pipes. I instruct them to use soft earth 
for their bullets, so that they do not kill the 
birds but simply stun them. I myself use some 
trap cages. My garden is full of Blue, Palm, 
Black, and Silver-beaked Tanagers. Within a 
week we have in our aviaries more of them 
than we need. The seed-eaters, also very abun¬ 
dant near the house, are not nearly so easy to 
catch. Every day I go to the jungle. The sec¬ 
ond growth begins two miles from the town, be¬ 
yond the more or less cultivated marshy land. 
Some low trees are covered with fruit; my bird 
catchers become busy hitting the numerous yel¬ 
low-winged sugar-birds which feed on the trees. 
In the cage they quickly recover from the shock. 
We also procure in the second growth, tur¬ 
quoise, black-headed, and purple sugar-birds. 
The convict camps are scattered in the forest 
as far as ten miles from St. Laurent. The men 
are employed in cutting timber. Light railway 
lines connect the camps and afford very con¬ 
venient means of transport through the wonder¬ 
ful virgin jungle. On a truck pushed by two 
Arab convicts, I go in all directions, stop where 
I want to, and then walk through the jungle. 
Life is plentiful in French Guyana, but the 
jungle is so dense in some parts, the trees so 
tall in others, that it needs much patience and 
careful w r atching to see its inhabitants. I sit 
on a log, motionless, and soon agutis and 
acushis come out to eat the “Momba prunes” or 
wild plums. The aguti is similar to the British 
Guyana one, the acushi, common in the Maroni, 
is a charming diminutive of its relative, with a 
curious unaguti-like tail. A pair of big curas- 
sows also make their appearance; tinamous and 
rufous pigeons walk about. On the trees, a 
flock of yellow-headed manakins hop among the 
branches; green and violet trogons chase in¬ 
sects. I intend to stay there for hours, but the 
terrible mosquitoes have soon discovered me; I 
am surrounded by a cloud, my face and hands 
are covered with hungry insects. I must move 
to kill them,—and all animal life disappears 
with frightened cries. 
On the little railway line I occasionally have 
a glimpse of marail guans, tinamous, and 
acuchis, and a snake is not infrequently met 
with. Then my Arabs stop, and with their long 
sticks try to kill the poor reptile, which they 
always consider as most venomous. When I 
catch with my hands some inoffensive snake, 
they think that I am an unnatural person! 
Two of the most beautiful birds of Guyana, 
the Royal Topaz Hummingbird and the Para¬ 
dise Tanager, are rather common in the jungle, 
but the flocks of tanagers keep to the tree top, 
while the Topaz feed amongst the crimson 
spikes of a liana which blossoms a hundred feet 
high. Little hope to catch them. 
Beyond the camps, the only trails in the 
jungle are the telegraph lines. The director 
of the Telegraph Service in French Guyana is 
a very keen sportsman, who takes much interest 
in nature. Every twenty miles he has a small 
camp, where a few convicts live to keep the line 
in good condition. In his company I leave St. 
Laurent and for a fortnight we walk through 
jungle and savannas. The Guyana jungle gives 
me a very strong impression; undoubtedly it is 
not so charming as the tree-fern woods of the 
hills of Martinique, nor so beautiful as the few 
virgin forests still existing in the mountains of 
Venezuela, but it has a grandeur that I had not 
seen before. These enormously tall and com¬ 
paratively slender trees (an Angelique that we 
felled proved to be 160 feet high), covered with 
lianas and epiphytes, creates a very special at¬ 
mosphere, while the various palms and heli- 
conias growing between them accentuate the 
equatorial aspect of the jungle. Another beauty 
of the Maroni forest is the particularly numer¬ 
ous butterflies that it contains. The various 
Morphos shine everywhere, slowly flying with 
metallic blue wings, while green and black 
Uranias are common in the town, and even on 
the river. Unfortunately, in some districts, 
progress in the jungle, even on the trails, is 
made very difficult by the dampness of the soil, 
which is simply mud in many places. Clouds 
of mosquitoes often prevented me from watch¬ 
ing wonderful sights of flocks of birds in the 
trees, while various ants, the uncontested mas¬ 
ters of Guyana, become a real nuisance. 
Every day my catchers bring in animals and 
birds; agutis, acuchis, armadillos, are forced 
into their holes by dogs and captured. Sugar- 
birds, tanagers, manakins and hummingbirds 
fill my cages. Tinamous and doves come now 
and then; sometimes a surprise; some Cayenne 
crake or a Topaz. It is by no means easy work 
to accustom to captivity and keep in good 
health many of these inhabitants of the jungle. 
Fooks is up every day at five o’clock to feed 
