204 PASSERES. — AMFELID.E. 



sweetness. If I may conjecture, these true me- 

 lodies are peculiar to the nuptial season, and in- 

 dicate that the period of incubation is either begun 

 or near ; a time that generally exerts much in- 

 fluence on the singing of birds. 



From that time they filled the woods with theu' 

 solemn music, until April ; when they began to 

 become scarce, and by the middle of May not 

 one was to be heard or seen. I concluded that 

 they were migratory, and had now departed from 

 the island for the summer ; but on mentioning the 

 fact to Mr. Hill, he informed me about the be- 

 ginning of June, that a friend of his who had 

 travelled through the Coona-coonas a day or two 

 before, (a district of the Blue Mountains, in which 

 Mr. Purdie heard them in his botanical tour, and 

 at the same season,) had heard them singing by 

 scores. And he adds, "My Haytian notes relate 

 to two visits to the mountains they inhabit in that 

 neighbour island ; the first was in August, the se- 

 cond in June ; and they were there in the lofty 

 pine forests in hundreds." The curious fact of the 

 total disappearance of the species from the Blue- 

 fields Peaks during the summer, while yet present 

 in the island, leads me to conjecture, that they 

 may be subject to the same instinct as influences 

 migratory birds, but leading them to seek a colder 

 climate, not in a northern latitude, but in a loftier 

 elevation. The Peaks of Bluefields, though the 

 highest land in the western part of the island, are 

 not more than 2600 feet high, and therefore far less 

 elevated than the ridges of the eastern end. 



