GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 35 



loud-voiced bird which has puzzled zoologists to 

 classify, some thinking it ralline others anserine in 

 its affinities, while Huxley considered it was related 

 to the archaeopteryx. Having established himself 

 on the back of a horse, Mr. Lydekker — a biological 

 Dr. Syntax of the twentieth century — set out in 

 quest of this singular fowl, and eventually in some 

 wild and lonely spot succeeded in catching sight at 

 a vast distance of a specimen or two. This did not 

 satisfy him; he wanted to see the great birds as I had 

 seen them, when I rode among them across a vast 

 marshy plain and saw them in pairs and parties, and 

 in bunches of a score or two to a hundred, like an 

 innumerable widely scattered flock of grazing sheep 

 spread out and extending on every side to the horizon. 

 And he wanted to hear them as I had heard them, 

 "counting the hours," as the gauchos say, when at 

 intervals during the night they all burst out singing 

 like one bird, and the powerful ringing voices of the 

 incalculable multitude produce an effect as of thou- 

 sands and tens of thousands of great chiming bells, 

 and the listener is shaken by the tempest of sound and 

 the earth itself appears to tremble beneath him. 



All this, our naturalist was informed by persons 

 on the spot, was pure romance; no such vast congre- 

 gations of crested screamers were ever seen, and no 

 such great concerts were ever heard; the bird, 

 as he had witnessed, was quite rare, and so it had 

 always been. 



This vexed him, and he resolved to have it out 

 with me on his return to England. The castigation 



