258 The Naturalist in La Plata. 



The case of a species in another order of birds 

 • — Crypturi — strikes me as being similar to this of 

 the oven-bird, and seems to lend some force to the 

 suggestion I have made concerning the early develop- 

 ment of voice in the young. 



Birds peculiar to South America are said by 

 anatomists to be less specialized, lower, more 

 ancient, than the birds of the northern continents, 

 and among those which are considered lowest and 

 most ancient are the Tinamous (rail and partridge 

 like in their habits), birds that lead a solitary, 

 retiring life, and in most cases have sweet melan- 

 choly voices. Rhynchotus rufescens, a bird the 

 size of a fowl, inhabiting the pampas, is perhaps 

 the sweetest-voiced, and sings with great frequency. 

 Its song or call is heard oftenest towards the 

 evening, and is composed of five modulated notes, 

 flute-like in character, very expressive, and uttered 

 by many individuals answering each other as they 

 sit far apart concealed in the grass. As we might 

 have expected, the faculties and instincts of the 

 young of this species mature at a very early period ; 

 when extremely small, they abandon their parents 

 to shift for themselves in solitude ; and when not 

 more than one-fourth the size they eventually attain, 

 they acquire the adult plumage and are able to fly 

 as well as an old bird. I observed a young bird of 

 this species, less than a quail in size, at a house on 

 the pampas, and was told that it had been taken 

 from the nest when just breaking the shell ; it had, 

 therefore, never seen or heard the parent birds. 

 Yet this small chick, every day at the approach of 

 evening, would retire to the darkest corner of the 



