3232 Birds. 



Alegra to the hills behind Santarem, it is probably thirteen or fifteen 

 miles in direct width, but at Ega the valley is doubtless more than a 

 hundred miles broad. Up the Rio Negro you have six weeks' voyage 

 before reaching the mountainous country ; and up the Jurna to the 

 south, people go up two months, and find no particularly high land ; 

 it is one vast flat of unbroken, lofty, and entangled forest. There are 

 no Cetonia?, except a few very rare Gymnetes ; very few Buprestidae 

 and Cleridae. You would see a fine series of Megacephalus Klugii, 

 and a few other species, in my last. I have now no more of them. 



I will prepare some kind of descriptive articles for the ' Zoologist,' 

 and send in my next. My great objection is, that I cannot mention 

 any animal, or insect, or plant, under a name by which it will be re- 

 cognized ; but I have some interesting notes on hunting turtles, &c. 



The yellow fever has now disappeared here. I am still in excel- 

 lent health, and ready for any kind of sport you could mention. 



Henry W. Bates. 



On the Habits and Instincts of Birds. — Birds are fond of building their nests near 

 the habitations of man, from a dread of vermin and birds of prey ; these last include 

 not only hawks, but many others not reckoned in that category. Partridges and phea- 

 sants constantly have their nests close to foot-paths and roads — even the railroads are 

 not exempt from their visits, they having been hatched within a foot of the very rails. 

 The notes of alarm of birds are easily known; I hear the thrushes in my shrubberies 

 often give them, and am sure to find a cat, a hawk, or a stoat near. The same with 

 the little wren ; she is always ready to announce the approach of a stoat or any other 

 enemy : so does the wary blackbird. When hunting in large covers, I have frequently 

 been warned of the unkennelling of a fox long before the hounds challenged, by the 

 " Skirr rick a dick dick '' of the watchful magpie. I forgot to mention another anec- 

 dote of rooks. I lived many years at Clifton, near the far-famed St. Vincent's Rocks. 

 There is a large rookery at Ashton Court, Somersetshire, " as the crow flies'' about a 

 mile and a half distant. A portion of these rooks have invariably gone out to feed on 

 the Gloucestershire side of the river for the last forty years, and still do so. I have no 

 doubt these rooks which cross the Avon, are descendants of some which formerly were 

 bred at Stoke (the Duke of Beaufort's), in Gloucestershire, where there is another 

 rookery still. These rooks may be seen to this day, going and returning, mornings 

 and evenings, as regularly as possible. I remember a severe frost, when a sort of sleet 

 fell, and froze the wings of many birds so that they were taken alive with the hand. 

 White mentions this to have happened in 1768. At Jersey they seldom have any se- 

 vere frost ; but about ten years ago a sharp frost came on, such as the oldest inhabi- 

 tant had never seen there. Several birds were frozen to death while at roost, and one 

 in particular was found inclosed in a sort of icicle, like a small lamp or cage, caused 

 by its breath previously to death ; it was quite stiff, and the twig of a tree surrounded 

 by what I have described. For a couple of days at this time the roads were impassa- 

 ble from frozen rain. A gentleman who saw this bird festooned in its icy cage, said 



