An hour later as I am kneeling quietly some six feet from the log, busy liberating a beautiful little butterfly from the tangle of a spider’s web, I am surprised to see the same opossum trot past. I know him because he has a kink in one ear. To see what the little fellow would do I leap toward him, but he has encountered me once and come to no harm, so he will not be turned back again. Instead of dodging me, the opossum only increases his speed, crosses the log, drops out of sight among the bushes, snorts twice to himself, and is swallowed up forever by the dark jungle. This log is apparently his regular highway, and he chooses to risk my apparently fierce onslaught and to run over the opened journal, bag, hat and gun, rather than change to a new path along another tree trunk a few feet farther along the trail. * * * * * We mortals sometimes have faint hints of coming events, and as I was leaving the clearing I instinctively kept all my senses on the alert. I had proceeded only a few yards into the jungle when some of the sweetest flute-like notes I have ever heard came from a patch of underbrush ahead. What could it be! I knew that no human being could whistle like that, and when they were repeated I realized how coarse any flute would sound in comparison. Nothing in this world but a bird could utter such wonderful notes. My memory recalled descriptions of the Quadrille-bird[125] and I knew I was at last listening to it. Our northern ravines have their Hermit Thrush; the canyons of Mexico are transfigured by the melody of the Solitaire and here in the deepest, darkest jungles in the world arises the spirit of the forest in song—the hymn of the Necklaced Jungle Wren. Dropping everything which would impede my progress, I crawled slowly and silently over the soft mould until I was close to the patch of thick brush. Then I waited and prayed, and the gods of the Naturalist were good, and a little brown form flitted up to a low branch and from the feathered throat came the incomparable tones of the fairy flute. The bird sang a phrase (I) of six to ten notes at a time. This was repeated several times, when an entirely new theme (II) was begun, which was given only once, then a third (III) and fourth were tried. Each note was distinct, and of the sweetest, most silvery character imaginable. In all but two phrases the invariable end consisted of two notes exactly an octave apart, the last like an ethereal harmonic. Twice the tones were loud and penetrating, twice they came so faintly that one’s ear could hardly disentangle them from the silence.