LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE 315 



the portion of my collections made in Para, Santarem and the 

 Lower Rio Negro. These I had sent off before leaving Barra 

 on my first voyage up the Rio Negro, and they had arrived 

 home safely; but I had reserved all my private collections for 

 comparison with future discoveries, and though I left these to 

 be sent home before starting on my second voyage up the Rio 

 Negro, they were never dispatched, owing to the Custom 

 House authorities at Barra insisting on seeing the contents 

 before allowing them to go away. I therefore found them at 

 Barra on my way home, and they were all lost with the ship. 



I had sent home in 1850 a short paper on the Umbrella Bird, 

 then almost unknown to British ornithologists, and it was 

 printed in the Zoological Society's Proceedings for that year. 

 The bird is in size and general appearance like a short-legged 

 crow, being black with metallic blue tints on the outer margins 

 of the feathers. Its special peculiarity is its wonderful crest. 

 This is formed of a quantity of slender straight feathers, 

 which grow on the contractile skin of the top of the head. 

 The shafts of these feathers are white, with a tufted plume at 

 the end, which is glossy blue and almost hair-like. When the 

 bird is flying or feeding the crest is laid back, forming a com- 

 pact white mass sloping a little upward, with the terminal 

 plumes forming a tuft behind ; but when at rest the bird ex- 

 pands the crest, which then forms an elongated dome of a 

 fine glossy, deep blue colour, extending beyond the beak, and 

 thus completely masking the head. This dome is about five 

 inches long by four or four and a half inches wide. Another 

 almost equally remarkable feature is a long cylindrical plume 

 of feathers depending from the lower part of the neck. These 

 feathers grow on a fleshy tube as thick as a goose-quill, and 

 about an inch and a half long. They are large and overlap 

 each other, with margins of a fine metallic blue. The whole 

 skin of the neck is very loose and extensible, and when the 

 crest is expanded the neck is inflated, and the cylindrical 

 neck-ornament hangs down in front of it. The effect of these 

 two strange appendages when the bird is at rest and the 

 head turned backwards must be to form an irregular ovate 

 black mass with neither legs, head, nor eyes visible, so as to 



