on the Birds of San Domingo. 325 



very stealthy stalk, I had the pleasure of watching one singing 

 for several minutes before I shot at and missed or lost it. 

 In the densest parts of the forest the odds are very heavy 

 against finding a small bird when shot, even those with 

 gaudy plumages. 



A week afterwards I saw another not quite so brightly 

 marked, which I believe to have been the female, near the 

 same spot. 



17. LOXIGILLA VIOLACEA. 



(Cory, op. cit. p. 69.) 



On Feb. 25 I shot, high up on the hills at the back of 

 Sanchez, among dense large growth, the only specimen I 

 saw of this species, a male, in which the testes were the size 

 of peas. The gizzard, which was a very muscular one, con- 

 tained stones and broken, black, hard seeds with yellow pulp. 



18. Icterus dominicensis. Locally " Segua calandra.^' 

 (Cory, op. cit. p. 71.) 



An Icterine peculiar to the island and interesting in many 

 ways. It was very common, and sometimes to be seen in flocks 

 of 20 or 30. At La Vega all through the day I could hear 

 the loud monotonous chirp of these birds while feeding in the 

 pitch-tree close to the house. This tree has large leaves, like 

 a Euphorbia, and a dozen birds might be feeding in it, but 

 not one be visible, so fond are they, I suppose, of the shade 

 of the leaves. Sometimes they would sing very prettily — a 

 quick, high-pitched, musical little warble. 



But occasionally I would hear from this tree quite a dif- 

 ferent song, composed of several loud notes, and on going 

 out all I could find would be a " Segua '' in the uniform 

 yellowish-brown plumage of the young bird (according to 

 Cory). This puzzled me a good deal, and I came to the 

 conclusion that there must be two different species. At 

 last, however, on May 24, I shot one of these brownish 

 birds, evidently in a transitional state between that and the 

 black-and-yellow plumage, in the act of singing this loud 

 song, and on dissection it proved to be a young female. 

 This rather added to the mystery at the time, for I was 



