Seen and Lost. 369 



another bird seen and lost, also remarkable for its 

 diminutive size. For years 1 looked for it, and 

 when the wished-for opportunity came, and it was 

 in my power to secure it, I refrained ; and Fate 

 punished me by never permitting me to see it again. 

 On several occasions while riding on the pampas I 

 had caught glimpses of this minute bird flitting up 

 mothlike, with uncertain tremulous flight, and again 

 dipping into the weeds, tall grass, or thistles. Its 

 plumage was yellowish in hue, like sere dead herb- 

 age, and its extremely slender body looked longer 

 and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length 

 of its tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I 

 knew that it was a Synallaxis a genus of small 

 birds of the Woodhewer family. Now, as I have 

 said in a former chapter, these are wise little birds, 

 more interesting I had almost said more beautiful 

 in their wisdom, or wisdom-simulating instincts, 

 than the quatzel in its resplendent green, or the 

 cock-of-the-rock in its vivid scarlet and orange 

 mantle. Wrens and mocking-birds have melody 

 for their chief attraction, and the name of each 

 kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain 

 kind of sweet music; we think of swifts and 

 swallows in connection with the mysterious migra- 

 tory instinct ; and humming-birds have a glittering 

 mantle, and the miraculous motions necessary to 

 display its ever-changing iridescent beauty. In 

 like manner, the homely Dendrocolaptidae possess 

 the genius for building, and an account of one of 

 these small birds without its nest would be like a 

 biography of Sir Christopher Wren that made no 

 mention of his works. It was not strange then, 



