After breakfast about 8 o’clock, while I was reconnoitering for the best place to begin trapping the Hoatzins, as we wished to take some home alive, tragedy came, sudden and unexpected. A single pitiful cry brought me back to the house in an instant, and there was Milady, who but a moment before had been happily planning with Crandall about preparations for trapping, lying with a broken wrist. A hammock in which she had seated herself for an instant had come untied and given way and it was a miracle that the seven foot drop backward to the ground had resulted in only one broken bone. Game little lady, her first words were, “Oh! we can’t get the Hoatzins”! The remainder of that 15th of April will ever be a misty dream in my mind. We bandied no words as to the value of Hoatzins in particular, or the whole world of science in general, versus Milady’s hurt, but without confusion quickly organized our plan of action. I had the best corps of helpers one could want; Mr. and Mrs. Vinton, Crandall and Harry. One of us constantly dropped cold water on the injury, another threw together all our belongings; others worked like Trojans to assemble the launch engines, which had been taken apart for cleaning. In two hours we were on the throbbing little boat, passing the Hoatzins and hosts of Ducks with unseeing eyes. Then two hours later at the railroad bridge came a quick run to the nearest telegraph office, where a sympathetic, 300 pound negro “mammy” presided over the instrument and wept copiously for the “po’ lil’ lady,” while she clicked out an urgent message for a special train. She said “Ah am too sorry for to heah dat bad news,” and when our procession drew up at her little house to wait for the train she called out to Milady the comforting information that “In der midst of life we are in death!” This greatly amused the sufferer, and we settled ourselves for the long wait. As long as one has something to do, any helpful work, to keep one’s hands or mind busy, it is an easy matter to control one’s feelings in a critical emergency. But when one must wait quietly for hours, the long period of inaction is maddening. We tramped up and down the track, telephoning every few minutes to locate the progress of the special along the line. Then Crandall spied a big yellow-tailed snake (_Herpetodryas carinatus_) crossing the track. Here was an excuse for working off surplus steam, and we both made a dash for it. Crandall caught it by the tail as it was disappearing into the brush and we had an exciting ten minutes getting it unharmed into a snake bag, the active creature succeeding in biting us twice before we muffled it. Visitors to the Reptile House of our Zoölogical Park little imagine, when gazing at this handsome creature, what a relief to our tense nerves its capture meant.