The natural history of galls is full of romance and strange unrealities, but to-day it meant to me only a renewed instance of an opportunity seized and made the most of; the success of the indirect, the unreasonable--the long chance which so few of us humans are willing to take, although the reward is a perpetual enthusiasm for the happening of the moment, and the honest gambler's joy for the future. How much more desirable to acquire merit as a footless grub in the heart of a home, erected and precariously nourished by a worthy opponent, with a future of unnumbered possibilities, than to be a queen-mother in nest or hive--cared-for, fed, and cleansed by a host of slaves, but with less prospect of change or of adventure than an average toadstool. * * * * * Thus I sat for a long time, lulled by similitudes of northern plants and bees and birds, and then gently shifted southward a few hundred miles, the transition being smooth and unabrupt. With equal gentleness the dead calm stirred slightly and exhaled the merest ghost of a breeze; it seemed as if the air was hardly in motion, but only restless: the wings of the bees and the flycatcher might well have caused it. But, judged by the sequence of events, it was the almost imperceptible signal given by some great Jungle Spirit, who had tired of playing with my dreams and pleasant fancies of northern life, and now called upon her legions to disillusion me. And the response was immediate. Three great shells burst at my very feet,--one of sound, one of color, and the third of both plus numbers,--and from that time on, tropical life was dominant whichever way I looked. That is the way with the wilderness, and especially the tropical wilderness--to surprise one in the very field with which one is most familiar. While in my own estimation my chief profession is ignorance, yet I sign my passport applications and my jury evasions as Ornithologist. And now this playful Spirit of the Jungle permitted me to meditate cheerfully on my ability to compare the faunas of New York and Guiana, and then proceeded to startle me with three salvos of birds, first physically and then emotionally.