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June 26 - New York

The days since Trinidad were hot and sticky - until yesterday, when, having packed all our warm clothes we found the night air decidedly cool.  Breaking all records for the line, the S.S. Brazil actually docked ahead of time, and we were tied up before eight o'clock.

Fyfe came to meet us, and to take the animals off our hands, but found that we did not have proper credentials for the llamas and guanacos.  We spent all morning on the pier, and did not get away until two o'clock, but by that time we had some assurance that the patient beasts we had worked with for so many days were not to be hit in the head and thrown overboard.

We have had unusually good luck with our traveling menagerie.  Bill says it is a smaller percentage of loss than he has ever seen before.  More than 250 animals are about to go to the zoo, and not more than a half dozen- and those small, delicate birds or frogs - died on the way up.  Oh, yes, there was one large loss, and that was Jones' capybara, which was buried at sea two nights ago.  And some of the snakes in the big crate from Butantan were evidently dead when they came on board, for they very soon began to smell and one by one were pitched over the side.  On the whole, however, we had remarkable luck.  Holmberg had told us of so many things, such as oven birds and black necked swans and the speckled perdis, that they did not live well in captivity, and that if Bill wanted to get home with any at all he had better collect large groups of them.  Of 24 perdis that left B.A., 24 go into the Zoo tomorrow, and that is a good record!