282 THE STORY OF A BIRD LOVER 



tailed and little black hawks. These birds had 

 been long known ; but it remained to find them 

 breeding, and to deduce from observation the 

 generalization that the difference in appearance 

 which had led naturalists to consider them spe- 

 cifically distinct was either a color-phase, corre- 

 lating with sex, or, what is more probable, a 

 double color-phase, such as exists in the common 

 screech-owl, numerous birds of prey, as well as in 

 some of the herons. At the Dry Tortugas, where 

 my contributions were chiefly concerning land- 

 birds, I observed two kinds of swallows, the 

 Cuban cliff swallow and the Bahaman swallow, 

 which had never before been recorded from 

 North America. During all this period contri- 

 butions were constantly made to technical ornith- 

 ological magazines recording the results of work 

 as it was accomplished ; the titles of these papers 

 form part of the bibliographic list appended to 

 this book. 



I wish it were in my power to express in con- 

 cluding this chapter my appreciation of the beauty 

 and variety of landscape in Florida, and to dwell 

 more fully upon the never-failing source of delight 

 afforded by its many waterways and the noble 

 Gulf which bounds its western shores. The vast 

 hammocks, with their imposing live-oak trees 

 festooned with Spanish moss, where great mag- 

 nolia trees shade under their overhanging limbs 



