THE SUNSET-BIRD. 43 
Impatiently I awaited the coming of dawn, which 
with its first indications rewarded my search. I saw 
a dusky body, a bird so small that I concluded it 
could not be the author of so loud a cry. But ina 
few minutes I noted it in the very act; and almost 
before it had finished its note, and while the final 
cadence was quavering on the air, the sound of my 
gun announced to my guide that the deed was done, 
and it was now too late to avert the vengeance of the 
evil spirits. Regardless of his lamentations, I stood 
absorbed in the contemplation of the bird now in my 
hand. That it was a zew bird I felt certain, and im- 
mediately — as soon as my agitation had subsided — 
I wrote a description of it. 
In shape and size it resembles the “king-bird,” 
so familiar to dwellers of the north; it is eight and 
one-half inches in length; its upper plumage is dark 
brown; quills brownish-black; under the wings pale 
yellow; throat and upper parts of breast and sides 
clear bluish-gray ; portion of breast and under parts 
pale yellow; bill broad and thin, and black like the 
feet.* 
Six months later this bird reposed in the Museum 
at Washington, and I received from the ornithologists 
(as I was then at work in a distant island) a notifi- 
cation to the effect that it was a mew species, and had 
been named the AZyzarchus Obert. Though I after- 
ward discovered many new birds, there was not one 
with which it would have given me greater satisfac- 
tion to have my name identified. 
* The reader is referred, for farther information upon the birds 
captured by the author, to the list of Birds of the Lesser Antilles, 
in the Appendix. 
