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CHAPTER VII. 



JAMAICA. 

 1 844- 1 846. 



IN 1770 Gilbert White of Selborne wrote to Daines 

 Barrington : " A sight of the hirundines of that hot 

 and distant island of Jamaica would be a great entertain- 

 ment to me." Seventy-four years later the ornithology of 

 that ancient colony remained, as Bell has said, scarcely 

 better known than it was in White's time. It was now 

 to be carefully and indeed exhaustively investigated, with 

 the result that since Gosse's visit but few new facts of any 

 importance have been added to knowledge. He spent 

 eighteen months in Jamaica, during which time his atten- 

 tion was mainly, though not exclusively, directed to the 

 birds of the island. When he arrived, the ornithology of 

 Jamaica was in a chaotic state ; when he left, nearly two 

 hundred species of birds were clearly ascertained to belong 

 to the island fauna. Of mammalia, reptiles, and fishes 

 he was able to add twenty-four new species to science. 



The voyage out was not a remarkable one. From the 

 zoological point of view its interest culminated in the 

 observation, in mid Atlantic, of a very rare, if not absolutely 

 undescribed, cetacean. There seems to be very little 

 doubt that the troop of large dolphin-like whales which 

 sported about the vessel for nearly seventeen hours, on 

 November 22 and 23, was identical with the toothless 



