FIELD NATUBALIST8' CLt E. 137 



against the impalement of butterflies and complain of the many 

 enemies they have, forget that these things of beauty were cnce 

 the hungry caterpillars which devoured our best trees, ferns and 

 plants and played havoc with oar flower garden-, and always knock 

 down the Chamaeleons who do their best to capture them as 

 they go to lay their eggs on their favourite food plants. But 

 my time has gone. I intended to have enumerated the Dragon 

 fly or addersman, as he is called in some parts of England, whose 

 sole mission is the destruction of gnats, mosquitoes and buttei flies, 

 doves and pigeons which devastate our grain cultivations and a 

 dozen other things, but as I 1 efore said, the time is gone and 

 I can only conclude, by hoping that something I have said may be 

 useful to you and that it will serve to induce 30U to disregard 

 popular prejudice, which demands the destruction of many of our 

 best, but hitherto persecuted friends. 



December 6th, 1893. 



THE " POOR ME ONE." 



( Xyctibius Jamaicensis Gm, 



By A. B. Carr. 



ON a moonlight evening in the month of February 1S93, 

 between 7 and 8 o'clock, I was attracted by the beautiful, 

 though sad, call of the "Poor me One" (the supposed small ant 

 eater, of which more anon), and on taking up my gun and pro- 

 ceeding in the direction of the sound, I observed, perched on a 

 dry stump, somewhat taller than the young Immortel trees in its 

 immediate vicinity, a big bird sitting, after the manner of goat- 

 suckers, upright with its tail pressed riimly on the stump. I had 

 not long to wait, ere the bird uttered its call, which consisted of 

 eix notes pitched in a minor key, thus : — 



tt 



m 



77 



= 



(J 



TT 



This was repeated again and again, at short intervals. "V\ hen 

 satisfied that my soloist was the aulhor of this peculiarly sweet 

 and sad song, with which for so long a time the small ant-eater, 

 Cyclothurus didactylus, had been unduly accredited, I shot and 



