and big corrals.  In the quadrangle were flamboyant trees, with their masses of brilliant red flowers and delicately cut, vivid-green foliage.  Noisy oven-birds haunted these trees.  In a high palm in the garden a family of green parakeets had taken up their abode and were preparing to build nests.  They chattered incessantly both when they flew and when they sat or crawled among the branches.  Ibis and plover, crying and wailing, passed immediately overhead.  Jacanas frequented the ponds near by; the peons, with a familiarity which to us seems sacrilegious, but to them was entirely inoffensive and matter of course, called them “the Jesus Christ birds,” because they walked on the water.  There was a wealth of strange bird life in the neighborhood.  There were large papyrus-marshes, the papyrus not being a fifth, perhaps not a tenth, as high as in Africa.  In these swamps were many blackbirds.  Some uttered notes that reminded me of our own redwings.  Others, with crimson heads and necks and thighs, fairly blazed; often a dozen sat together on a swaying papyrus-stem which their weight bent over.  There were all kinds of extraordinary bird’s-nests in the trees.  There is still need for the work of the collector in South America.  But I believe that already, so far as birds are concerned, there is infinitely more need for the work of the careful observer, who to the power of appreciation and observation adds the power of vivid, truthful, and interesting narration—­which means, as scientists no less than historians should note, that training in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men.  The outdoor naturalist, the faunal naturalist, who devotes himself primarily to a study of the habits and of the life-histories of birds, beasts, fish, and reptiles, and who can portray truthfully and vividly what he has seen, could do work of more usefulness than any mere collector, in this upper Paraguay country.  The work of the collector is indispensable; but it is only a small part of the work that ought to be done; and after collecting has reached a certain point the work of the field observer with the gift for recording what he has seen becomes of far more importance.

The long days spent riding through the swamp, the “pantanal,” were pleasant and interesting.  Several times we saw the tamandua bandeira, the giant ant-bear.  Kermit shot one, because the naturalists eagerly wished for a second specimen; afterward we were relieved of all necessity to molest the strange, out-of-date creatures.  It was a surprise to us to find them habitually frequenting the open marsh.  They were always on muddy ground, and in the papyrus-swamp we found them in several inches of water.  The stomach is thick-walled, like a gizzard; the stomachs of those we shot contained adult and larval ants, chiefly termites, together with plenty of black mould and fragments of leaves, both green and dry.