194 SYLVIADiE. 



prevailing on them for the first time to admit suspicion into their 

 guileless bosoms, off hurries the whole interesting group with quick 

 and undulating motion to the nearest tree or young plantation in 

 sight j yet there, if you follow them cautiously and noiselessly, 

 they will re-admit you to nearly former familiarity, and so enable 

 you to pry once more into the mysteries of their ceconomical de- 

 partment." 



In April, 1 841, this species was met with as follows in H.M.S. 

 Beacon in the Mediterranean : — 23rd, eighty miles from Malta, 

 and fifty from Cape Passaro, the nearest land, one flew on board : 

 — 25th, about sixty miles from Calabria, and 135 from Mount 

 Etna, another appeared; one which I caught, perched quietly on 

 my finger, and was so carried about to feed on flies, which it seized 

 when within reach, never leaving the hand if the fly could possibly 

 be captured thence : — 26th, eighty miles from Zante, 130 from 

 Navarino, a willow wren and a chiff-chaff (S. rufa) were found 

 dead in my cabin. They had not been caught or injured in any 

 way, and must, I think, have died from fatigue ; want of food 

 could hardly have caused their death, as there were plenty of flies 

 in the cabin. On this same day, one of Nattered s warblers 

 [Sylvia Natter eri, Temminck,), a south of Europe species, was 

 caught. 



I possess a specimen of the 8. Trochilus, which flew on board a 

 ship in 1834, to the north-west of the Azores, in latitude 44° N. 

 and longitude 34° W. ; the date, unfortunately, was not commu- 

 nicated. 



