Seen and Lost. 369 
another bird seen and lost, also remarkable for its 
diminutive size. For years I iooked for it, and 
when the wished-for opportunity came, and it was 
in my power to secure it, I refrained; and Fate 
punished me by never permitting me to see it again. 
On several occasions while riding on the pampas I 
had caught glimpses of this minute bird flittmg up 
mothlike, with uncertain tremulous flight, and again 
dipping into the weeds, tall grass, or thistles. Its 
plumage was yellowish in hue, like sere dead herb- 
age, and its extremely slender body looked longer 
and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length 
of its tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I 
knew that it was a Synallaxis—a genus of small 
birds of the Woodhewer family. Now, as I have 
said in a former chapter, these are wise little birds, 
more interesting—I had almost said more beautiful 
—in their wisdom, or wisdom-simulating instincts, 
than the quatzel in its resplendent green, or the 
cock-of-the-rock in its vivid scarlet and orange 
mantle. Wrens and mocking-birds have melody 
for their chief attraction, and the name of each 
kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain 
kind of sweet music; we think of swifts and 
swallows in connection with the mysterious migra- 
tory instinct ; and humming-birds have a glittering 
mantle, and the miraculous motions necessary to 
display its ever-changing iridescent beauty. In 
like manner, the homely Dendrocolaptide possess 
the genius for building, and an account of one of 
these small birds without its nest would be like a 
biography of Sir Christopher Wren that made no 
mention of his works. It was not strange then, 
