154 Idle Days in Patago^iia. 



which is vastly richer in species than the northern 

 half of the continent, the songsters certainly do not, 

 like those of Europe, mass themselves about the habi- 

 tations of men, as if sweet voices were given to them 

 solely for the delectation of human listeners : they 

 are pre-eminently birds of the wild forest, marsh, and 

 savannah, and if one of their chief merits has been 

 overlooked, it is because the European naturalist 

 and collector, whose object is to obtain many speci- 

 mens, and some new forms, has no time to make 

 himself acquainted with the life habits and faculties 

 of the species he meets with. Again, bird life is 

 extremely scarce in some places within the tropics, 

 and in the deep forest it is often wholly absent. Of 

 British Guiana, Mr. im Thurn writes, " The almost 

 entire absence of sweet bird-notes at once strikes 

 the traveller who comes from thrush and warbler- 

 haunted temperate lands." And Bates says of the 

 Amazonian forests, " The few sounds of birds are 

 of that pensive and mysterious character which 

 intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than 

 imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness." 



It is not only this paucity of bird life in lai'ge 

 tracts of country which has made the tropics seem 

 to the European imagination a region "where birds 

 forget to sing," and has caused many travellers and 

 naturalists to express so poor an opinion of Soutli 

 American bird music. There remains in most 

 minds somethiuo' of that ancient notion that brilliant- 

 plumaged birds emit only harsh disagreeable sounds 

 — the macaw and the peacock are examples ; 



