56 My. E. Gibson on the Ornithohc/y of [Ibis, 



feeling of admiration and Immiliation tltat I draw attention 

 to his interesting and accurate description o£ its sociable in- 

 terchange of visits for the purpose of amusement or play — 

 a wonderfully systematical performance, as punctilious in the 

 details as any set of quadrilles. Truly, to one human being 

 is given the gift of distinguishing and co-ordinating what his 

 visual sense observes ; whilst another only sees a meaningless 

 coming-and-going of the actors in the scene, conveying no 

 signification to his dull mind ! 



A winnowing-out of my diary affords material for a few 

 more remarks regarding this most familiar bird and tiie 

 Pampas, of which it might be said that to one acquainted 

 with them both, they are the natural concomitant of each 

 other, and that it would be almost as impossible to men- 

 tally recall the '' Terii-terii'Mvithout the Pampas, as these 

 plains deserted by the " Terii-teru." 



Moisture is one of its desiderata, and an open outlook 

 another ; hence it does not like the giant-grass coverts of 

 the original pampa. But, to take a case within my own 

 cognisance, when General Roca's expedition of forty years 

 ago incorporated in the State an aiea of 15,000 square 

 leagues of Indian territory known as the Pampa Central, 

 and this vast and lonely country came under the develop- 

 ment of the settler ; then — wherever a rancho was built and 

 a well dug, with the natural treadiiig-out and grazing-down 

 of the giant grasses and the formation of an open patch of 

 sward — came from out of nowhere, a pair of the "Terii- 

 terii," to be the companion and watcliful associate of man, 

 as much a creature of the new creation as the half-dozen 

 poultry or the house-dogs. 



Drought has naturally a bad effect on these birds, which, 

 as Hudson states, are little given to migration or the shifting 

 of their life-quarters. But when to tliis is added a winter of, 

 say, great and continuous frosts, the mortality is distressing; 

 under the double scourge of no water and a frost-bound 

 soil, the unhappy Lapwings get thinner from day to day, and 

 ultimately die of inanition. I have also known our severe 

 hail-storms to be productive of many casualties; the closely 



