further details were lacking, and we were
driven to clothe this imperfect ghost with history and habits of our
own devising.

The birds and other inhabitants of the bamboos, were those of the more
open jungle,--flocks drifting through the clumps, monkeys occasionally
swinging from one to another of the elastic tips, while toucans came
and went. At evening, flocks of parrakeets and great black orioles
came to roost, courting the safety which they had come to associate
with the clearings of human pioneers in the jungle. A box on a bamboo
stalk drew forth joyous hymns of praise from a pair of little
God-birds, as the natives call the house-wrens, who straightway
collected all the grass and feathers in the world, stuffed them into
the tiny chamber, and after a time performed the ever-marvelous feat
of producing three replicas of themselves from this trash-filled box.
The father-parent was one concentrated mite of song, with just enough
feathers for wings to enable him to pursue caterpillars and
grasshoppers as raw material for the production of more song. He sang
at the prospect of a home; then he sang to attract and win a mate;
more song at the joy of finding wonderful grass and feathers; again
melody to beguile his mate, patiently giving the hours and days of her
body-warmth in instinct-compelled belief in the future. He sang while
he took his turn at sitting; then he nearly choked to death trying to
sing while stuffing a bug down a nestling's throat; finally, he sang
at the end of a perfect nesting season; again, in hopes of persuading
his mate to repeat it all, and this failing, sang in chorus in the
wren quintette--I hoped, in gratitude to us. At least from April to
September he sang every day, and if my interpretation be
anthropomorphic, why, so much the better for anthropomorphism. At any
rate, before we left, all five wrens sat on a little shrub and
imitated the morning stars, and our hearts went out to the little
virile featherlings, who had lost none of their enthusiasm for life in
this tropical jungle. Their one demand in this great wilderness was
man's presence, being never found in the jungle except in an inhabited
clearing, or, as I have found them, clinging hopefully to the
vanishing ruins of a dead Indian's _benab_, waiting and singing in
perfect faith, until the jungle had crept over it all and they were
compelled to give up and set out in search of another home, within
sound of human voices.

Bare as ou