1816 Birds. 



The Blue Quit (Euphonia Jamaica). — " February 5th, 1838. Near the piazza of 

 my house a cotton-bush has flung out its knots of white filaments. Hither come the 

 birds at this season, to gather materials for constructing their nests. The blue spar- 

 row, a pretty little frugivorous bird, that sings in our fruit-trees all the year round its 

 merry twittering song, has been busily engaged with his mate collecting bills-full of 

 cotton. It did not seem to be a thing immediately settled that they should set to 

 work and gather their materials at once. They had alighted on the tree as if they had 

 very unexpectedly found what they were seeking. The male began to twitter a song 

 of joy, dancing and jumping about, and the female, intermingling every now and then 

 a chirp, frisked from stem to stem, and did very little more than survey the riches of 

 the tree; at least she plucked now and then a bill-full of the filaments, and spreading 

 it to flaunt to the wind tossed it away, as if she had been merely showing that it every 

 way answered the purpose in length and softness, and was in every respect the thing 

 they wanted. At each of these displays of the kind and quality of the materials, the 

 male intermingled his twittering song with a hoarse succession of notes, which were 

 always the same, chu> chu, chu, chu, chwit, to which the female chirped two or three 

 times in succession, then grasping another bill-full of cotton, tossed it away as before, 

 and obtained from the male the same notes of attention and approval. At last they 

 set to work in earnest, gathered a load of the materials drawn out as loosely as they 

 could get it, and filling their bills, started away to the tree, wherever it was, in which 

 they had determined to build their nests." — p. 241. 



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" Immediately behind the homestead of Bluefields, a lane, confined for a mile or 

 two between dry-stone walls, leads to the road, which winds in a zig-zag line to the 

 top of the Bluefields ridge. This lane possesses many attractions. By the wall on 

 each side grow trees, which afford grateful shade, and many of them load the evening 

 air with dewy fragrance. Orange-trees profusely planted, give out, in spring, gushes 

 of odour from their waxen blossoms, and in autumn tempt the eye with their " golden 

 fruitage." The Pride of China, lovely in its graceful leaves and spikes of lilac blos- 

 soms, and not less sweet-scented than the orange, — the pimento, dense and glossy, 

 with another, but not inferior, character of beauty, — are varied by the less showy, but 

 still valuable, cedar and guazumo. The various species of Echites trail their slender 

 stems and open their brilliant flowers along the top of the wall, and the pretty Banis- 

 teria displays its singular yellow blossoms, or scarlet berries at its foot, while, near the 

 top of the lane, tangled and matted masses of the night-blowing Cereus depend fiom 

 the trees, or sprawl over the walls, expanding their magnificent, sun-like flowers, only 

 to ' the noon of night.' Here and there huge black nests of Termites look like barrels 

 built in the walls, whose loose stones, grey with exposure, and discoloured with many- 

 tinted lichens, afford a sombre relief to the numerous large-leafed Arums that climb 

 and cluster above them. To the left the mountain towers, dark and frowning; the 

 view on the right is bounded by a row of little rounded hills, studded with trees and 

 clumps of pimento. But between the traveller and either, extend the fields of guinea- 

 grass, which are enclosed by these boundary walls. In the autumn, when the grass 

 is grown tall, and the panicles of seed waving in the wind give it a hoary surface, the 

 little grass-quits, both of this and the following species, throng hither in numerous 

 flocks, and perching in rows on the slender stalks, weigh them down, while they rillc 

 them of the farinaceous seeds.'' — p. 249. 



The Yellow-bellied Parroquet (Conurus Jlaviventer). — " But the precaution of (lie 



