would lap the flowing blood and enlarge the wound. South America makes
up for its lack, relatively to Africa and India, of large man-eating
carnivores by the extraordinary ferocity or bloodthirstiness of
certain small creatures of which the kinsfolk elsewhere are harmless.
It is only here that fish no bigger than trout kill swimmers, and bats
the size of the ordinary "flittermice" of the northern hemisphere
drain the life-blood of big beasts and of man himself.

There was not much large mammalian life in the neighborhood. Kermit
hunted industriously and brought in an occasional armadillo, coati, or
agouti for the naturalists. Miller trapped rats and a queer opossum
new to the collection. Cherrie got many birds. Cherrie and Miller
skinned their specimens in a little open hut or shed. Moses, the small
pet owl, sat on a cross-bar overhead, an interested spectator, and
chuckled whenever he was petted. Two wrens, who bred just outside the
hut, were much excited by the presence of Moses, and paid him visits
of noisy unfriendliness. The little white-throated sparrows came
familiarly about the palm cabins and whitewashed houses and trilled on
the rooftrees. It was a simple song, with just a hint of our northern
white-throat's sweet and plaintive melody, and of the opening bars of
our song-sparrow's pleasant, homely lay. It brought back dear memories
of glorious April mornings on Long Island, when through the singing of
robin and song-sparrow comes the piercing cadence of the meadowlark;
and of the far northland woods in June, fragrant with the breath of
pine and balsam-fir, where sweetheart sparrows sing from wet spruce
thickets and rapid brooks rush under the drenched and swaying alder-
boughs.

From Tapirapoan our course lay northward up to and across the Plan
Alto, the highland wilderness of Brazil. From the edges of this