Notes from a Traveler in the Tropics 341 



A seventh call was strangely familiar, and, to my intense surprise, I learned 

 that it was uttered by a California Valley Quail! 



There are so many things in Chile which suggest California that when I 

 succeeded in identifying the characteristic little crowing sit-right-down, sit- 

 right-down, and heard it uttered by numbers of birds, I was not, for a moment, 

 certain whether I was on the north or south Pacific coast. The mystery was 

 explained by an American sportsman I subsequently met in Santiago, who 

 informed me that Valley Quail had been introduced from California into Chile, 

 at Coquimbo, in 1837. They are now among the common birds of central Chile. 



The blossoms of the eucalyptus trees about our inn at Apoquindo were 

 frequented by such large numbers of Hummingbirds that at times the air 

 'buzzed' as it would about a bee-hive. By far the larger number were the com- 

 mon green, ruby-crowned species {Eustephanus galeritus), a bird nearly twice 

 the size of our Ruby-throat, and there were also a few Giant Hummers (Pata- 

 gona gigas), the largest of all Hummers, with a length of eight inches. The larger 

 birds seemed in constant pursuit of the smaller ones, after the aggressive manner 

 of Hummers, and on one occasion I saw a Giant Hummer actually catch a 

 Ruby-crown, fly with it in his claws about a hundred feet, where, some fifteen 

 feet from the ground, he paused for about fifteen seconds facing the trunk of a 

 eucalyptus, when the smaller bird succeeded in making its escape and flew 

 away, apparently unhurt. 



Patagona feeds chiefly on insects which it catches in the air or from flowers, 

 and it is not conceivable that its capture of anothei Hummer was prompted by 

 other than the vicious disposition of its family. 



Chile may roughly be divided into three districts: The northern desert, 

 the central semi-arid, and the southern humid. Their character is determined 

 by the amount of rain they receive, which, from practically nothing in northern 

 Chile, reaches more than 300 inches annually in southern Chile. It may also 

 be said that from practically no vegetation at the north, we pass through grad- 

 ually increasing zones of fertility to the luxuriant forests of the south. There is, 

 of course, a corresponding change in bird-life, but it is a change in character, 

 not in abundance, for the forests of southern Chile are far from supporting the 

 numbers of species or individuals which one might expect to find in them. 

 My journey through southern Chile was made too rapidly to permit of more 

 than the most casual observations of birds. The bird-life of the high, bare 

 tablelands is readily seen, but no tropical forest I have worked in is denser 

 than the rain-soaked woods of southern Chile. 



Some day I hope to return to this region as an ornithologist, when with good 

 fortune, I may gather material which will warrant my writing of its birds. 

 Meanwhile, I commend it to the attention of all travelers in South .\merica 

 as a country of rare beauty and intense interest. The naturalist who can deter- 

 mine the origin of its fauna will make a contribution of high imjwrtance to our 

 knowledge of the earth's history and the study of the distribution of life. 



