ORNITHOLOGY IN 1851. 
keeping with the deep solitude. In the wood that covers, as with an 
ever verdant crown, the lower hills, the Black Shrike ( Tityra leuco- 
notus ), and the Cotton-tree Sparrow ( Pyrrhula violacea), enunciate 
their clear musical calls, so much alike as scarcely to be distinguish- 
ed ; four or five notes running up the scale so rapidly, as to be 
fused as it were together, and suddenly falling at the end.” Again, 
“ The most minute of birds, the tiny Vervain Humming-bird {Mel- 
lima, humilis ), not larger than a schoolboy’s thumb, utters a song 
so sweet, but of sounds so attenuated withal, that you wonder who 
the musician can be, and are ready to think it the voice of an in- 
visible fairy, when presently you see the atom of a performer per- 
ched on the very topmost twig of a mango or orange tree, his slender 
beak open, and his spangled throat quivering as if he would expire 
his little soul in the effort.” 
Mr. Gosse also writes of the Mocking-bird ( Orphceus poly glottis), 
as equalling all the encomiums passed upon its song by Wilson : 
“ If all the birds of Jamaica were voiceless except the mocking- 
bird, the woods, and groves, and gardens, would still be every where 
vocal with his profuse and rapturous songs.” The Water Thrushes 
( Sieurus ), and the Wood Thrush {T. mustelinus ), are also among the 
admired songsters ; and these, mingled with the plaintive notes of 
some of the doves and pigeons, place Jamaica in a high position as 
to the qualifications of its ornithological musicians. 
. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, with Hlustra- 
tions. No proceedings have been published during the past year, 
which we regret, as there are some interesting ornithological papers 
that ought to have been given. 
Annals and Magazine of Natural History , including Zoology , 
Botany and Geology , vols. vii. ym.— Notes an some Bones and Eggs 
' "V a \ Madagascar, in recent Alluvia , belonging to a Gigantic 
Pird By M Isidore G. St. Hilaire. Translated from the 
omp es en us. Letter from Mathew Moggridge, Swansea, 
nis tri actylus, picked up dead, 28th February, in Swansea 
Fill *£** Washed ashor e.— Visit to the Cave of the 
Notices B Tn NeS v fr ° m Mr> EDGAR Sard’s Journal - 
Scotland T* e T W ° rorer Birds found in the South of 
IC y JoiIN Ale *ander Smith, M.D. A paper read 
