Rev. A. C. Smith on the Birds of Portugal. 431 



twenty consecutive miles will see the same many-coloured heath 

 extending on all sides as far as the horizon, and not a vestige of 

 man or his works. Still more, as, mounted on horseback, for 

 hour after hour he follows the ill-defined track, or loses himself 

 on those vast plains of uniform aspect, where no landmarks 

 point out the direction he is following, he will learn to appreciate 

 the extent of uncultivated land around him, where the sandy 

 soil forbids the husbandman to labour, and declines to yield 

 any crop to recompense his toil. But this compulsory abandon- 

 ment to Nature of such large districts, however injurious to the 

 property of the people, is highly gratifying to the naturalist. 

 To the ornithologist who has leisure to linger in its recesses, and 

 explore it carefully, a Portuguese heath will be found to harbour 

 many an interesting species, though the cursory traveller, hurry- 

 ing through it from point to point as rapidly as he can, will 

 declare that, with the exception of an occasional large Uawk or 

 Eagle soaring high above his head, not a bird is to be seen. To 

 the botanist, as I have already remarked, it is a very garden of 

 treasures, an elysium such as I can scarcely believe to be sur- 

 passed. To the entomologist it is a glorious field, abounding in 

 butterflies and bright-coloured insects of a thousand forms ; 

 while to his ear the perpetual loud chirp of the cricket would be 

 music, however distasteful and even annoying it is to others — 

 though perhaps I am wrong in this last assertion, inasmuch as 

 I frequently witnessed in the market of Lisbon a thriving trade 

 in these same black-and-yellow crickets all in full song, a tiny 

 cage of wire with its tiny occupant fetching the sum of twenty 

 reis, or one penny sterling. 



It may, then, readily be supposed that a country which pre- 

 sents such diversity of scenery, intersected by rivers whose 

 banks are clothed with the most luxuriant vegetation, abounding 

 in wide-extending forests, as well as vast uncultivated heaths, 

 or sandy plains covered with brush, with an open coast extend- 

 ing from north to south washed by the waves of the wide 

 Atlantic, furnished here with rugged rocks, and there with 

 cultivated fickls, and all lying under a climate which, for un- 

 clouded brilliancy of sun, and almost tropical heats, can scarcely 

 be matched in any other district of Earo})e, must possess an 



