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ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 



sufficient to repay the mere professional collector the 

 expenses of his voyage in search of them. 



(216.) Continuing our survey along the coast, we 

 find much has been done in particular provinces, while 

 immense tracts of country still remain unexplored. 

 Thus the banks of the great river Marinham, or the 

 Oronokoo, have been visited by Spix, Burchell, and 

 LangsdorfF, but of all the collections they formed, those 

 of Spix alone have been rendered available to science. We 

 have been informed that this naturalist was at length so 

 overwhelmed with the new objects that crowded upon 

 him in every department, that he was absolutely wea- 

 ried to satiety, and determined on returning home to 

 Europe: justly considering that, had he still continued 

 to collect, he could never hope to make known even one 

 entire portion of his discoveries.* Our own researches 

 in Brazil were going on at the same time, but in a dif- 

 ferent direction ; nearly a year was spent in the province 

 of Pernambuco alone, and we subsequently traversed 

 overland to Bahia, an immense province which had 

 never before been visited by any European naturalist. 

 The great harvest of the ornithology of these provinces, 

 no less than those of Rio de Janeiro^ St. Paul's, Minas 

 Geraes, and some others, has consequently been al- 

 ready reaped, but abundant gleanings must yet remain. 

 Of the extent to which M. Natterer, the German natu- 

 ralist, who has been collecting in Brazil for the em- 

 peror of Austria the last seventeen years, has prosecuted 

 his travels, we know not ; but marvellous, not to say 

 incredible, accounts of the number of species he has 

 collected have been circulated in this country, f On the 

 whole, therefore, the greater part of Brazil, large as it 

 is, does not offer any expectations of much novelty in 

 its feathered tribes, unless in such provinces as Goyaz, 



* This suspicion was unfortunately verified; for this able and indefati- 

 gable zoologist was taken from us soon after he commenced publishing the 

 zoological fruits of the expedition. 



f Since the above was written we have had the pleasure of a personal 

 visit from Dr. Natterer, whom we left in Brazil in 1817. He has only just 

 returned to Europe, having procured the astonishing number of 1070 species 

 of birds,in that vast empire. 



