168 BLUEFIELDS. 



most resound with the voices of feathered songsters. 

 The beautiful park-like estates of the southern slopes 

 of Jamaica present scenes peculiarly inviting and 

 suitable for the winged orchestra to exercise its vocal 

 talent ; — and the notes of melodious joy are pouring 

 forth in them from earliest dawn to sunset ; — aye, 

 long before dawn, and long after the veil of night 

 has been outspread. The Swallows {Hirundo pceci- 

 loma) that shoot along in their arrowy traverses over 

 the plains, now darting across the placid stream, now 

 coursing far up in the thin air, almost lost in the 

 glaring sun-beam, twitter sweetly as they pass, and 

 now and then one and another sitting on the summit 

 of a low tree commence a stammering song by no 

 means deficient in music* The Blue Martins 



* " Ordinarily, in our livelong sunshine, our House Martin {H. 

 paciloma) is seen careering about his haunts, — in and out of caverns 

 in the solitude of cliffs and rugged hills, and in and about sheds and 

 galleries, in our social dwelling-places. When the vernal equinox has 

 blown over, and has brought fitful showers of rain, and the House 

 Martin has profited by the little puddles round about to collect mud to 

 patch and extend the stucco-work of his grotto, he chatters to his 

 mate between- whiles as he toils, a low muttering song, very guttural, 

 and just barely musical ; and he continues this twittering talk during 

 the unwearied hours he spends by her side, and with her nurslings, all 

 through the summer. When, however, the autumnal season gathers 

 stormy, and the overcast sky prepares us for deluging rains, he 

 changes his habit, and with his habit his very voice. He then quits 

 the cavern or the shed, and making a party of four or five, is seen 

 perched on the upper dry limb of some neighbouring tree, singing a 

 loud-voiced song, so different in tone and character from anything you 

 may hear from him at any other time, that you cannot recognise the 

 same bird in the wild and deep-toned ecstasy of what is then his 

 musical humour. My attention was first called to this peculiarity last 

 year by some friends who noticed the unusual song, in a road that 



