HOPPING DICK. 141 



ing and brilliant. It was now not a single one of 

 these birds that I heard singing lonely in a seques- 

 tered cluster of trees, but a hundred of them far 

 and near, blending their voices together, or vying 

 with each other in rivalry of song. My frequent 

 weekly journeys in these districts, from this period to 

 the end of August, were always cheered by this 

 simultaneous outburst of melody from the Merula 

 saltator,'^ 



I found a nest of this bird one day in the middle 

 of August; it was affixed to the highest perpen- 

 dicular limb of a rather tall pimento in Mount 

 Edgecumbe, and consisted of a rude cup formed 

 of the slender roots of pimento, and placed on a 

 platform of leaves and small twigs. It contained 

 two young, almost fledged, which flew to the 

 ground before they could be seized, — and one 

 abortive ^gg. The young displayed the plumage 

 of the adult, even to the white webs on the two 

 coverts ; but the eyes w^ere dark greyish-brown, 

 the beak blackish, and the feet, dull, horny yel- 

 low. The Qgg measures 1 j*o inch : by -^-^ : it is 

 white, thickly splashed with dark and pale reddish- 

 brown. Sometimes, as I have been informed, a 

 decaying stump is selected, or any other convenient 

 hollow, into which the bird carries " plantain trash," 

 or similar materials, and forms a rude nest, laying 

 three or four eggs. And Mr. Hill gives me a 

 statement of a locality w^hich is intermediate be- 

 tween these ; observing, " A friend of mine found 

 the nest of a Hopping Dick. It was built amid 

 the dry leaves that had lodged within the forks 



