POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of night iiionkevs. The Columha leucocephala (a congener of our 

 ringdove) inliabits the mountain forests in countless swarms, and at 

 the end of the rainy season visits grainfields in such numbers that 

 hundreds are sometimes captured in nets, by means of corn scattered 

 along the furrows. 



A closely allied variety is found in San Domingo, where in many 

 upland regions a darkey, equipped with a shotgun and a supply of 

 gunpowder, can dispense witb agriculture and raise a family of 

 anthropoids on pigeon pies and tortillas, compounded from the grain 

 found in the crops of his victims. 



But the tittyhlang (tete-hlanc) has scores of smaller and larger 

 cousins, culminating in the Cuban primate of the family, the splen- 

 did paloma real, with its coronet of pearl-gTay plumes and dark-blue 

 wings. 



Ducks, too, must number some twenty West Indian species, and 

 one kind of wild geese often obliged the rice planters to employ 

 mounted sharpshooters, who galloped up and down the long dikes, 

 yelling blasphemies, and every now and 

 then enforcing their quotations with a 

 handful of buckshot. But, for all that, 

 the planter could think himself lucky 





PoKTO Rico Parrakeet. 



to gather a sixty-per-cent harvest of the total produce, for experience 

 soon enabled the long-necked depredators to estimate the target range 

 of the cazador within a dozen yards and take wing in the nick of 

 time, only to resume their feast at the other end of the plantation. 



