uralist, has two pages of very interesting discourse on the color relation be- 

 tween birds and their surroundings in the wild- woods of that island. He 

 fully saw and described the distinctness of the three main color-classes of trop- 

 ical forest birds, the brown, the green, and the gaudy-motley, each with its 

 own appropriate local habitat. Much of what I have said on this immediate 

 theme is scarcely more than an echo of Mr. Chapman's words, though based 

 on our own subsequent investigations in the same island forests. Limited as 

 they are in extent, the primeval woods of Trinidad are doubtless fairly repre- 

 sentative in character of the great South American tropical forests, and, by 

 the same token, of all the humid tropical forests of the world. For, as we 

 learn from traveled naturalists, tropical "high woods" are all much alike in 

 their main general characteristics. Just how largely this likeness extends to 

 the general habits and disguising-equipments of the forest birds, we, person- 

 ally, cannot say; but there is every reason to suppose that the main principles 

 are the same among the birds of tropical Asia, Africa, and Malaysia, as among 

 those of tropical America. Indeed, a study of tropical birds in museums, and 

 of the writings of naturalist travelers, leaves one with little doubt on this 

 score. 



In the matter of local habitat, Chapman divides the forest birds of 

 Trinidad (and hence of all tropical America) into five groups, namely, those 

 of the tree-tops, those of the shaded foliage below the tree-tops, those of 

 the tree trunks below the foliage, those of the bushes and scrub at the for- 

 est's border, and those of the ground. The first and second groups comprise 

 respectively the gaudy and the green birds, as has been told. The three 

 remaining groups Chapman lumps as brown birds. This will do for a very 

 general classification, but it seems to me that while the scansorial and ter- 

 restrial species may well be classed together, the scrub birds should be sep- 

 arated from them. For, many of these scrub-birds, as Chapman intimates, 

 lack the characteristic forest brown, or have in addition a large share of other 

 colors. Their 'class,' however, is laxer and more irregular than the rest, 

 and its special characters are harder to define. Both in habits and in colora- 



