154 Ldle Days in Patagonia. 
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 large 
tracts of country which has made the tropics seem 
to the European imayination a region “ where birds 
forget to sing,” and has caused many travellers and 
naturalists to express so poor an opinion of South 
American bird music. There remains in most 
minds something of that ancient notion that brilliant- 
plumaged birds emit only harsh disagreeable sounds 
—the macaw and the peacock are examples; 
