Every evening at half past five o’clock we would troop down to the stream and swim and paddle about on the sand bars in the half day—half moonlight. The water was cool and refreshing and the temperature of the air invigorating at this hour, and to lie on one’s back and look up at the lofty moras and other trees stretching their branches fifty yards or more overhead was a sensation never to be forgotten. We spent ten days at the Aremu Mine, and it speaks well for the working possibilities of this region that I was able to rise at five o’clock in the morning and with intervals only for meals, keep up steady work—exploring, photographing and skinning until ten o’clock at night, when usually the last skin would be rolled up or the last note written. I would then tumble, happy and dead tired, into bed and know nothing until the low signal of our Indian hunter summoned me in the dusk of the following morning. I worked harder than I ought to have done even in our northern countries and yet felt no ill effects. What impressed me chiefly in regard to the birds of this region was, first the abundance, and second, the great variety. In the course of the ten days of our stay, we identified 80 species of birds, and observed at least a full two hundred more which we were unable to classify except as to family or genus. Wishing to study the birds alive I refrained from shooting as much as possible and chose to make this expedition rather one of preparation in learning what tropical wood-craft I could from an excellent Indian hunter, than of gathering a collection and thereby a lengthy list of mere names. When, sometime in the future, we return to this splendid field of study and spend months in careful observation of some such limited region, we may hope to add something of real value to our knowledge of the ecology of these most interesting forms of tropical life. We have the results of the collector, par-excellence, in our museum cases of thousands of tropical bird-skins. Now let us learn something of the environment and life history of the living birds themselves. [Illustration: FIG. 128. MILADY AND THE GIANT MORA TREE.] It is against my rule to write in diary form, but owing to the limited time we spent at Aremu and the series of events, some of which extended over two or three days, I have made an exception in this case and will put down a few of the incidents of jungle life in the order in which I observed them. Far from giving all the observations made here on birds and other creatures, I have included only those of greatest interest, which will convey an idea of the conditions of life here as compared to those in our northern woods and forests.