Bats and Birds of Jamaica. 



6591 



tivation does not keep them down, with an interminable thicket of 

 cashaws. The Ornithology is peculiar also, chiefly from the immense 

 numbers of Icterus leucopteryx, Centurus radiolatus and lowland 

 Columbadae which inhabit these last. The Banana birds especially 

 abound : the nests, in the topmost branches of the logwood generally, 

 were the most familiar objects of every morning's ride. All those I 

 examined were evidently old and deserted, as the time for building 

 had not arrived. There were often two or three in the same tree ; this 

 was, I presume, not because these birds build in companies, but from 

 the same pair frequenting the same tree, and each year constructing a 

 new nest. I would remark that there is certainly a distinction in the 

 colouring of the quills and tail-feathers ; in some they are black, in 

 others olive-green : as far as I have observed, this did not seem to be 

 sexual. Did you observe it ? 



" It may perhaps be as well here to mention the few particulars of 

 an unknown bird I met with in this district, though the evidence I have 

 to offer is not so satisfactory as 1 could w r ish. A friend had sometime 

 before asked me if I knew there were two species of nightingale * 

 (Mimus) in the island, but, as he was not sure whether the one we 

 then saw devouring bird-peppers in the garden w r as the larger or 

 smaller of the two, I did not think much of the remark ; but in 

 crossing a dreary region, half swamp and covered with the shrubs that 

 flourish on tracts occasionally submerged, a bird flew across the track, 

 which I at first thought was one of the cuckoos, from its size, and then 

 saw was a nightingale, but at the moment, intent on other objects, the 

 difference did not strike me. The next day I was again shooting over 

 the same locality, a waste of great extent, which unites the Portland 

 ridge with the main land, when I again saw the same bird. It was 

 evidently a nightingale, but wanted the conspicuous white feathers in 

 the expanded wings, and I think also in the tail. It flew to the top- 

 most bough of a mangrove, and gave me ample proof of its vigorous 

 powers of song : 1 watched it with the greatest interest for some time. 

 During the song it every now and then rose perpendicularly about 

 three feet, alighting in the same place, but without interrupting the 

 song. I fired at it; it immediately dropped into the centre of the 

 thicket beneath, but afterwards I had the mortification of seeing it 

 glide off low over the ground ; I pursued it without success. After 

 much fatigue I caught sight of another, which 1 likewise missed, and 

 then was obliged from fatigue to give up, for the day was already at 

 meridian heat. I soon after met a negro with a gun, who seemed to 



* The mocking-bird, provincially called " nightingale."— P. H. G. 



