116 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 96 



colored, small birds. Although this is said to be a common 

 practice in foreign lands, this instance was the sole one wit- 

 nessed by me. Two days later, while yet many miles from 

 Rhodes and the mainland, there came to our steamer's deck 

 two Wagtails and a Redbreast. The last named hopped about 

 quite fearlessly in its search for food. 



We awoke the next morning to find our vessel anchored 

 at Vathy, which is situated at the lower end of a pear-shaped 

 bay, whose waters were of deepest blue. The rugged hills 

 of this isle of Greece did not look fertile, but they must nur- 

 ture the vine in abundance, and there must still be people 

 who " fill high the bowl with Samian wine,'' for throughout 

 the entire day our ship was taking* on board a seemingly end- 

 less number of casks of it. But the most impressive thing 

 at Vathy was its stone-paved, scrupulously clean water-front. 

 Probably a cleaner quay can nowhere be found, certainly not 

 in America. After three months' experience with the filth 

 and poverty of the Orient the tidiness of Vathy was a most 

 pleasing surprise. Its children looked robust, comfortably 

 clad, and did not beg. It was not far to the open country, 

 in which two of us took a long walk, at first through very 

 narrow stone-walled lanes, which at last brought us out upon 

 a well-paved road. Nowhere did animal life seem abundant: 

 two goats, four pigs, and a few donkeys completed the list 

 of quadrupeds. Aside from many Swallows flying above the 

 market-place, no more than a hundred individual birds were 

 seen. This number included a Kestrel, a score of Gulls in 

 the harbor, two dozen Hooded Crows, and about ten spe- 

 cies of small birds. One bird, about the size of our Robin, 

 v/as seen for an instant on the ground. Excepting the 

 Crows it was rare to see a bird upon the ground, most of 

 them hid themselves amid the foliage of the trees, where 

 even the briefest glimpses of them were difficult to secure. 

 The two or three species of Warblers were as elusive as 

 elsewhere ; but persevering eflfort was crowned with success 

 in the cases of the Greenfinch, and of the females of the 



