THE SUNSET-BIRD. 43 



Impatiently I awaited the coming of dawn, which 

 with its first indications rewarded my search. I saw 

 a dusky body, a bird so small that I concluded it 

 could not be the author of so loud a cry. But in a 

 few minutes I noted it in the very act ; and almost 

 before it had finished its note, and while the final 

 cadence was quavering on the air, the sound of my 

 gun announced to my guide that the deed was done, 

 and it was now too late to avert the vengeance of the 

 evil spirits. Regardless of his lamentations, I stood 

 absorbed in the contemplation of the bird now in my 

 hand. That it was a new bird I felt certain, and im- 

 mediately as soon as my agitation had subsided 

 I wrote a description of it. 



In shape and size it resembles the "king-bird," 

 so familiar to dwellers of the north ; it is eight and 

 one-half inches in length ; its upper plumage is dark 

 brown ; quills brownish-black ; under the wings pale 

 yellow ; throat and upper parts of breast and sides 

 clear bluish-gray ; portion of breast and under parts 

 pale yellow; bill broad and thin, and black like the 

 feet.* 



Six months later this bird reposed in the Museum 

 at Washington, and I received from the ornithologists 

 (as I was then at work in a distant island) a notifi- 

 cation to the effect that it was a new species, and had 

 been named the Myiarchus Obcri. Though I after- 

 ward discovered many new birds, there was not one 

 with which it would have given me greater satisfac- 

 tion to have my name identified. 



* The reader is referred, for farther information upon the birds 

 captured by the author, to the list of Birds of the Lesser Antilles, 

 in the Appendix. 



