314 MY LIFE [Chap. 



with notes of their colours, their dentition, and their fin-rays 

 scales, etc. I had also a folio Portuguese note-book contain- 

 ing my diary while on the Rio Negro, and some notes and 

 observations made for a map of that river and the Uaupes. 

 With these scanty materials, helped by the letters I had sent 

 home, I now set to work to write an account of my travels, as 

 well as a few scientific papers for which I had materials in the 

 portion of my collections made in Para, Santarem, and the 

 Lower Rio Negro. These I had sent off before leaving Barra 

 on my first voyage up the Rio Negro, and they had arrived 

 home safely ; but I had reserved all my private collections 

 for comparison with future discoveries, and though I left 

 these to be sent home before starting on my second voyage 

 up the Rio Negro, they were never despatched, owing to the 

 Custom House authorities at Barra insisting on seeing the 

 contents before allowing them to go away. I therefore found 

 them at Barra on my way home, and they were all lost with 

 the ship. 



I had sent home in 1850 a short paper on the Umbrella 

 Bird, then almost unknown to British ornithologists, and it 

 was printed in the Zoological Society's Proceedings for that 

 year. The bird is in size and general appearance like a 

 short-legged crow, being black with metallic blue tints on 

 the outer margins of the feathers. Its special peculiarity is 

 its wonderful crest. This is formed of a quantity of slender 

 straight feathers, which grow on the contractile skin of the 

 top of the head. The shafts of these feathers are white, with 

 a tufted plume at the end, which is glossy blue and almost 

 hair-like. When the bird is flying or feeding the crest is laid 

 back, forming a compact white mass sloping a little upward, 

 with the terminal plumes forming a tuft behind ; but when 

 at rest the bird expands the crest, which then forms an 

 elongated dome of a fine, glossy, deep blue colour, extending 

 beyond the beak, and thus completely masking the head. 

 This dome is about five inches long by four or four and a half 

 inches wide. Another almost equally remarkable feature is a 

 long cylindrical plume of feathers depending from the lower 

 part of the neck. These feathers grow on a fleshy tube as 



