HOPPING DICK. 139 



Bluefields Peaks, though I have sometimes seen 

 him, he is chiefly represented by his congener, the 

 Glass-eye : in the solitudes of Basin-spring, a lower 

 elevation, both species are numerous. 



In some " Contributions to Ornithology," by Dr. 

 Richard Chamberlaine, published in the Companion 

 to the Jamaica Almanack for 1842, this bird is 

 described. The following observations are there 

 quoted from a letter of Mr. Hill's to the Doctor : — 

 " I paid a visit the other day to the Highgate moun- 

 tains, a district in which our native Ouzel, the 

 Hopping Dick, is exceedingly abundant. On ask- 

 ing one morning the name of the bird, whose clear, 

 mellow-toned whistle I was then listening to, a 

 negro told me it was the Ho])ping Dick, and that 

 they * always hear him' when the long days begin.' 

 The long days had not yet begun ; but at early 

 dawn, while the distant horizon was seen but 

 faintly gleaming through the dull grey break of 

 daylight, and many of these Merles were gliding 

 from one thicket to another, and dashing across the 

 road with that bounding run from which they derive 

 their soubriquet of Hopping Dick, one bird anti- 

 cipated the season of song, by repeatedly sounding 

 two or three cadences of that full deep whistle 

 with which he salutes the lengthening year. 



" The forests skirting the mountain are his fa- 

 vourite haunt. If he frequents the open slopes and 

 crests of the hills, he glides from tree to tree, just 

 above the surface of the grass. If he rises above 

 the lower branches of the pimento, or into some of 

 the loftier shrubs, it is to visit the Tillandsias, 



