A NIGHT WATCH. 



175 



the mosquitoes gathered from far and wide to that 

 dehcious banquet of sultry Venezuelan blood. 



The series of parrots which caused all this fuss and 

 discomfort now repose peacefully side by side in a cabinet 

 in the British Museum of Natural History. Perhaps 

 some day in the future, some one writing a paper mil 

 compare them with another series of parrots from some 

 other island or locahty. He will measure them, may be, 

 with painful accuracy, with a measure ruled off in 

 millemetres, describing in still more painful detail their 

 various peculiarities and points of difference as regards 

 other species. He will fumble with them for a time, 

 making an occasional note, throwdng them down here and 

 there upon the table, or tossing them nonchalantly across 

 it, to some other enthusiast, who, being employed on 

 quite another region of the world, will probably be very 

 faintly interested ; and as a result of it all, this parrot 

 will be raised, may be, to the dignity of figuring as a 

 new species or sub-species, and the fact will be pubhshed 

 in the " Ibis." 



But for this man, or anyone else who chances to examine 

 them, they will be mere " skins." And can dry " skins " 

 speak ? Can they mean anything more than a mere 

 arrangement of feathers, except to him who collected 

 them ? Will he ever suspect what the series cost in 

 mere Venezuelan coal, in Venezuelan blood, and in the 

 wear and tear of rusty Venezuelan machinery ? 



Will he ever have heard, as we can now, the shrill 

 discordant cries of a far-away flock of parrots, as they greet 

 the morning sun, rising like a red ball of fire from its bed 

 in the Caribbean Sea ? Will he ever have hstened to 

 their strange conversational call-notes, as they fly by 

 in a big flock, but all in pairs ; and the sun, scarcely 

 half an hour high, shines full upon their flanks, making 

 them gloriously and brilliantly green ? Will he ever 

 know what it means to wander in the woods of a 

 small and lonely Caribbean island and watch the 

 day begin in the first cool hour of a tropical morning ? 



