22 



A FLYING TRIP TO THE TROPICS. 



limits of the town. We had hardly gone two hundred yards when 

 we began to see numbers of the small ground doves ; and I shot 

 two, one a male in fine plumage. They were, as I had thought, 

 the same as those found in our Southern States. 



We first followed out a ridge running west for about a mile 

 :ind a half. The country was very rough and hilly, the rock out- 

 cropping in every direction. In places, the ground was covered 

 with fragments of the fossil coral, looking like pieces of bones ; in 

 others, the outcropping rock was as rugged and sharp as slag from 

 a blast furnace. The surface was covered with a dry, thorny scrub, 

 about three feet high, and the stems of this scrub were loaded with 

 small, oblong, oval snails, about the size and shape of a 32-calibre 



rifle-ball. In walking along we 

 crushed so many under foot that 

 our shoes were made quite sticky. 

 In this scrub I saw and heard sev- 

 eral little yellow birds, and shot 

 one, which, on picking up, I found 

 to be a warbler, — a male. It 

 was much like our yellow warbler, 

 except that its forehead and 

 crown were chestnut {Dendroica 

 rufopileata). Along here we also 

 saw a number of small finch-like 

 birds, and Cabell shot a pair {Eiietheia hicolor). The male was 

 dark slate about the head and breast, the rest of its plumage 

 greenish gray. The female was plain greenish gray. They have 

 very high culmens, and look like little grosbeaks. We heard them 

 singing in all directions. Farther on we turned to our right, and 

 went down into a little valley, where there was a small pool of 

 brackish water, and here were some few trees, a couple of tama- 

 rinds, some date palms, and a number of calabash-trees. The cala- 

 bashes are spherical or oval, smooth, and green like small water- 

 melons, and grow from the trunk of the tree or side of the large 



CURAgAO LAND SHELL (PUPA UVA, LINN.). 



