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Ship’s Captains by the name of “ Monkey Joe,” and monkeys

were almost the only live stock he had, and very few of those

too. Of birds, he had an exceedingly fine King Vulture which I

felt sorely tempted to buy, and two or three Sun Bitterns, one of

which I bought. One day I had offered to me in the Market, a

lovely specimen of the Japim Hangnest (Cassicus persiais), but

as the owner would not accept less than 60,000 reis (£2) for it.

I declined the offer. This was the only bird I saw in the

thousands of miles between Iquitos and Para that I should really

have cared for. I expect shortly to make another trip to South

America, and perhaps I may be more fortunate next time. I

think our dealers at home must get the bulk of their Brazilian

birds from the Southern parts of Brazil, where the people being

less wealthy are glad to do anything to make money: but along

the Amazonian valley where the rubber boom has brought such

enormous wealth to the country, the natives have no need to

seek to make money by the wholesale exportation of birds.


(To be Continued ).



WILD BIRDS’ NESTING PLACES.


By H. C. Martin.


The correspondence in the December number of the

Magazine regarding the encouragement of wild birds by

supplying them with suitable nesting places reminds me of some

further interesting points 011 the subject, about which I had had

it in my mind to write to the Society before, and which came

especially to my notice in the following waj^: Some time ago,

while turning over the leaves of a German agricultural paper, I

came across the circular of a firm who make a business of the

manufacture of artificial nesting places for such insectivorous

birds as build in holes in trees, etc., and whose presence

and multiplication it is highly to the interest of farmers

and fruit-growers to encourage. It is pleasing to bird-lovers

to think that such a business, which one would at first regard

as trifling, ridiculous almost, can be worth carrying on, prov¬

ing, as it does, the existence of a very general kindly feeling

towards the wild birds as well as a wide-spread appreciation of

the valuable services they render—and in this, I think, we may

well accept a little lesson from our enterprising neighbours on

the Continent, for it is to be feared that in England the precise

sentiment that makes the business possible, is far from prevailing



