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inside or on the top of his cage, speaking in such a sweet ljitle

soft voice and kissing so affectionately and daintily with the

gentlest touch of his big bill, to be exempt from the failing, but

if you look you will see a whole box of matches fragmentarily

adorning the tray of his abode. He filched them from the corner

of the mantelpiece just now while I was out of the room, and

when I returned, pretended he couldn’t imagine how it happened.

But .Polly Alexander will sit all day quite good upon her stand,

to which she is not chained. At tea time she orders a lump of

sugar and a piece of cake, dipping the former in her water and

licking it in a delightfully intelligent way. Her only vocal

accomplishment is then displayed, “ T’chik, t’chik, t’chik (as to

a horse but louder) kiss, kiss, KISS!” About 9.30 p.m. she

flaps her wings and sails across the room, alighting without

discrimination and equally without dignity—usually in a bunch

between something and the wall. This aerial display alarms my

husband extremely, the more so as she always appears to be

steering for his head. He had the pleasure of removing her

from the travelling cage when she arrived, when, in spite of the

thickest of driving gloves, she left her mark upon him, and

has borne him the grudge of the injurer ever since.



CORRESPONDENCE.



LETTERS ON THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA.


No. II.


Sir, —Since writing before, I have learnt a little more about the

Jamaica birds, partly by observation and partly by a visit to the Museum in

Kingston, where there is a fairly complete collection, some of them vilely,

and others tolerably well stuffed. At Port Antonio, where the hotel is built

on a hill, sloping down by grassy banks, covered with cultivated trees and

splendidly coloured crotons, to the lovely harbour, there were a few birds,

which were fairly tame and which we could watch from the verandah. A

pair of Banana Quits had a nest in an acacia. It was an untidy heaped

mass of hay-like fibres, swung at the end of a branch, and while we were

there they apparently brought off the young ones, though we did not see

the latter. The Banana Quit is a little bird, about the size of a Blue Tit,

greenish olive in colour, with smart yellow cheeks, and altogether a

showy little thing; just the same size is the quiet looking Grass Quit

of which there are two species, the yellow-faced, Phonipara olivacea, which

in the absence of the authority for reference, I take it is Gosse’s Olive Finch,

and the black-faced P. marchii (b). The Banana Bird is quite different to the

Banana Quit, and is a handsome thing, with a good deal of black and

yellow about it, and nearly as large as a (c) Thrush (Icterus leucopteryxj.



( b ). The Dusky Finch.—R.P.

(c). The Jamaica Hauguest.—R.P.



