74 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



If much remains to be done for the ornithology of Uru- 

 guay, still more does Paraguay offer an almost untrodden 

 field for the naturalist. Since the time of the Spanish 

 traveller Azara, whose work, published between the years 

 1802 and 1805, contains merely the Spanish names of the 

 birds, but is otherwise valuable, we have only the limited 

 observations made by Page, a United States naval officer, 

 who surveyed the Paraguay in 1857, and those of a German 

 traveller named Ehode, whose investigations were chiefly of 

 an ethnological nature. The results of Page's collections are 

 to be found in scattered notices in scientific serials. Of 

 those of Pihode, which were made from December 1885 to 

 February 1886, a catalogue has been published by Count 

 von Berlepsch in the Journal fur Ornithologie, 1887, to which 

 lie has added a list of all the species hitherto recorded from 

 Paraguay, including those in Azara's work so far as they 

 have been identified, and numbering 357 in all. 



The immediate locality from which the present collection 

 has been sent is the Estancia of Ytanu, which is situated 

 about 80 miles to the south of Asuncion, the capital, and on 

 the bank of the Eiver Parau, a tributary of the Paraguay, 

 from w^hich latter it is distant in a direct line about 12 

 miles. The Estancia has a river frontage of 12 miles, and 

 the house stands 300 yards from the bank of the stream. 

 The boundary touches at one point a large lake named the 

 Laguna Ipoa, distant 9 miles. The Parau, which has its 

 primary origin in Laguna Ipoa, flows out of a great swamp 

 upwards of 6 miles wide, lying on the borders of the lake. 

 It is very winding in its course, and from the point where it 

 becomes a stream has a length of about 24 miles to its point 

 of junction with the Paraguay. Opposite Ytanu the banks 

 are somewhat raised, and the channel in dry weather is only 

 about 20 yards wide, and from 3 to 5 feet in depth, with a 

 sluggish and almost imperceptible current. Elsewhere the 

 banks are lower and the stream wider and shallower. The 

 ground being flat and level, the river during the rains often 

 covers a width of from 500 to 600 yards. Laguna Ipoa is 

 believed to be about 6 miles wide, and contains some small 

 islands, but neither it nor the adjoining great swamp have 



