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EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 



In this month's ' Avicultural Magazine' will be found the first part of 

 "A Naturalist's Notes in Ecuador," by Mr. Walter Goodfellow, who, with 

 Mr. Claud Hamilton, has spent two years in that interesting region. We 

 extract the following remarks anent Humming-birds, which, the writer 

 remarks, would be generally associated with sunny flower-bedecked glades : 

 — " It is true that numbers of them are found (and some beautiful ones 

 too) in the hot forests of Tropical America, but they are much more 

 numerous, and far more beautiful in the higher Andes ; some of the 

 loveliest of all being found at altitudes of between eight aud thirteen 

 thousand feet ; whilst the little Black Hummer with a sapphire throat, 

 known as Jameson's Humming-bird, I have seen, when camping out on 

 the volcano of Pichincha, Condor-shooting, flying past our tent in a heavy 

 snowstorm, with its mournful twit twit, at an altitude of over fourteen 

 thousand feet. I have noticed others of the same family sitting on the 

 telegraph-wires (apparently a favourite post of theirs) along the dusty roads 

 in the central highlands, in the most prosaic manner possible, watching, 

 perchance, for passiug insects, darting into the air to seize their prey on 

 the wing, and always returning to the same spot. It seems to be almost a 

 general rule in Ecuador that Humming-birds which make their home in 

 the dense forests lack almost entirely the beautiful iridescence peculiar to 

 most members of the family. But, if they lack colour, many of them have 

 peculiarities of form — as, for instance, the wonderful curved bill of the 

 Eutoxeres aquila, the saw-bill of the Androdon aquatorialis, and the elon- 

 gated tail-feathers of the Phcethornis syrmatophorus. In showing Hum- 

 ming-birds' skins to friends at home one always hears the remark, ' How 

 lovely they must look flying about ! ' It is true they do look pretty with 

 their graceful poses, but their wonderful colouring is generally then almost 

 entirely invisible, and certainly not seen to proper advantage, many species 

 looking much the same as one another in freedom, but vastly different when 

 held in the hand and turned to the right light." 



In the 'American Naturalist' for December last there has been pub- 

 lished the account of a most instructive observation by Florence Wells 



