ch I had shot many cotingas. The
stump was there, a bit lower and more worn at the crevices, leaking
sawdust like an overloved doll--but the low shrub had become a tall
sapling, the weeds--vervain, boneset, velvet-leaf--all had been topped
and killed off by dense-foliaged bushes and shrubs, which a year
before had not raised a leaf above the meadow level. The old vistas
were gone, the landscape had closed in, the wilderness was shutting
down. Nature herself was "letting in the jungle." I felt like Rip Van
Winkle, or even more alien, as if the passing of time had been
accelerated and my longed-for leap had been accomplished, beyond the
usual ken of mankind's earthly lease of senses.

All these astounding changes had come to pass through the heat and
moisture of a tropical year, and under deliberate scientific
calculation there was nothing unusual in the alteration. I remembered
the remarkable growth of one of the laboratory bamboo shoots during
the rainy season--twelve and a half feet in sixteen days, but that was
a single stem like a blade of grass, whereas here the whole landscape
was altered--new birds, new insects, branches, foliage, flowers, where
twelve short months past, was open sky above low weeds.

In the hollow root on the beach, my band of crane-flies had danced for
a thousand hours, but here was a sound which had apparently never
ceased for more than a year--perhaps five thousand hours of daylight.
It was a low, penetrating, abruptly reiterated beat, occurring about
once every second and a half, and distinctly audible a hundred feet
away. The "low bush" from which it proceeded last year, was now a
respectable sapling, and the source far out of reach overhead. I
discovered a roundish mass among the leaves, and the first stroke of
the ax sent the rhythm up to once a second, but did not alter the
timbre. A few blows and the small trunk gave way and I fled for my
life. But there was no angry buzzing and I came close. After a
cessation of ten or fifteen seconds the sound began again, weaker but
steady. The foliage was alive with small Azteca ants, but these were
tenants of several small nests near by, and at the catastrophe overran
everything.

The largest structure was the smooth carton nest of a wasp, a
beautiful species, pale yellowish-red with wine-colored wings. Only
once did an individual make an attempt to sting and even when my head
was within six inches, the wasps rested quietly on the broken combs.