368 A JOURXEY IN BRAZIL. 
was one species among them which attracted my attention 
by its numbers, and also because it builds the most ex- 
traordinary nest, considering the size of the bird itself, 
that I have ever seen. It is known among the country 
people by two names, as the Pedreiro or the Forneiro ; 
both names referring, as will be seen, to the nature of 
its habitation. This singular nest is built of clay, and 
is as hard as stone (pedra), while it has the form of the 
round mandioca oven (forno) in which the country people 
prepare their farinha, or flour, made from the mandioca 
root. It is about a foot in diameter, and stands edgewise 
upon a branch, or in the crotch of a tree. Among the 
smaller birds I noticed bright Tanagers, and also a species 
resembling the Canary. Besides these, there were the 
wagtails ; the black and white widow-finches ; the hang- 
nests, or Japi, as they are called here, with their pen- 
dent, bag-like dwellings, and the familiar " Bern ti vi." 
Humming-birds, which we are always apt to associate with 
tropical vegetation, were very scarce. I saw but a few 
specimens. Thrushes and doves were more frequent, and 
I noticed also three or four kinds of woodpeckers, beside 
parrots and paroquets ; of these latter there were countless 
numbers along our canoe path, flying overhead in dense 
crowds, and at times drowning every other sound in their 
high, noisy chatter. 
" Some of these birds made a deep impression upon me. 
Indeed, in all regions, however far away from his own home, 
in the midst of a fauna and flora entirely new to him, the 
traveller is startled occasionally by the song of a bird or the 
sight of a flower so familiar that it transports him at once 
to woods where every tree is like a friend to him. It seems 
as if something akin to what in our own mental experience 
