THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST. 
: VoL. xx.—SEPTEMBER, 1886.—No. 9. 
ak ANIMAL TRAITS. 
BY I. LANCASTER. 
4 es convincing myself that the Lower Florida peninsula 
possessed the coveted facilities for prying into certain secrets 
of the birds which I was bent on having, a local habitation to 
~ “rve as headquarters was decided upon. Between the extremes 
of forty and ninety degrees, temperature might be ignored, while 
wind, sun and rain were to be housed against; so that a high 
ceiling and a large room with a good roof, the whole being made 
of rough boards and shingles, was all that even lavish expendi- = 
_ ture need provide. Glass was a useless luxury; windows were — 
needed in plenty, however, and full half of the entire side walls. 
— devoted to them. Two battens, the top one with gudgeons 
whittled on the ends, resting in an auger-hole in a block fastened 
to the walls, were nailed between two parallel joists in the vertical — 
a ing, when, on sawing the top and bottom across, the win- _ 
: dow was complete. When pushed out at the lower end like an 
_ Awning, the air and light were freely admitted, while the sun, rain- 
: — Wind were sufficiently excluded. A stick below, resting 
- 88ainst the sill to hold out the shutter, completed what I am dis- 
Posed to consider the ideal South Florida window. A tide-water — 
Steck, very crooked and full of deep holes and narrow shallows, — 
Was near by, the pine forests falling off as the. creek was ap- 
_Proached, several acres of dense scrub growth intervening to the 
Water's edge where I had located. The country in the vicinity. 
Was much broken—broken for Lower Florida. There were sandy 
Swells as much as twenty feet high above tide-water, and gullies _ 
that one could not leap across, but otherwise all was a dead level 
50 far as the ground was concerned, Matted jungles of tangled 
3 ns ne | ae 
“NO. 1x, 
