Day after day, on every tramp we took we were more and more impressed with the myriad examples of protective form and coloration. As I have said before, it is the immense variety rather than the exactness of detail which makes these resemblances so effective. I became so confused at times that repeatedly I would net a falling leaf or blossom or even fire at an imaginary bird, or on the other hand fail altogether to notice some rare bird or insect until I passed on some distance and happened to turn around. For instance, while walking along I saw something drift down and catch on a leaf. I thought to myself, this is surely an insect, although a most remarkable mimic. Then I bent over and examined it closely, lifting the branch close to my eyes, and decided it was nothing but a dead leaf, half curled and shrivelled up. As I turned away I swooped at it idly with my net and lo! it took to flight and cost me several yards of hard pursuit before I secured it again. The irregularity of its wings, their leaf-brown color edged with a line of yellow, and the remarkable drifting flight in full sunshine, all helped to deceive me. It was a moth, _Gonodonta pyrgo_. The Goldbirds,[115] although the size of large Thrushes, are absolutely indistinguishable in their garb of dull brown in the shadowy mid-forest, neither descending to the ground nor ascending to the sun-lit tree-tops. Almost as common as the piercing _wheé! wheé! o!_ of the Goldbirds was a less loud but penetrating _Chuckle-de-deé!_ which we heard almost as soon as we entered the shadows of the jungle. Three days of intermittent search passed before we discovered the author of this omnipresent sound. The note seemed to come from the tree-tops and we unconsciously held in mind a bird at least the size of the Goldbird. Imagine our surprise when, after searching the branches with aching necks, we finally detected the bird in the very act, finding it perched only about ten feet above our heads. It was a veritable mite of a bird, the Golden-crowned Manakin[110] clad in forest green with a tiny crown spot of yellow. From head to tail he measured less than three inches, and of all the marvels which we have encountered in our travels the most remarkable was how such a tiny creature, considerably smaller than our Ruby-crowned Kinglet, could produce such a tremendous volume of sound. His _Chuckle-de-deé!_ can easily be heard a hundred yards away through dense forest.