260 ON THE CLASSIFICATION OF BIRDS. 
sufficient to repay the mere professional collector the 
expenses of his voyage in search of them. 
(216.) Continuing our survey along the coasts we 
find much lias been done in particular provinceSj while 
immense tracts of country still remain unexplored. 
Thus the banks of the great river Marinhara, or the 
Oronokoo, have been visited by Spix, BurcheU, and 
Langsdorff, but of all the collections they formed, those 
of Spix alone have been rendered available to science. AVe 
have been informed that this naturalist was at length so 
overwhelmed with the new objects that crowded upon 
him in every department, that he was absolutely wea- 
ried to satiety, and determined on returning home to 
Europe : justly considering that, had he still continued 
to collect, he could never hope to make known even one 
entire portion of his discoveries.* Our own researches 
in Brazil were going on at the same time, but in a dif- 
ferent direction ; nearly a year was spent in the province 
of Pernambuco alone, and we subsequently traversed 
overland to Bahia, an immense province whicli had 
never before been visited by any European naturalist. 
The great harvest of the ornithology of these provinces, 
no less than those of Bio de Janeiro, St. Paul’s, Minas 
Geraes, and some others, has consequently been al- 
ready reaped, but abundant gleanings must yet remain. 
Of the extent to which M. Natterer, the German natu. 
ralist, wlio has been collecting in Brazil for the em- 
peror of Austria the last seventeen years, has prosecuted 
his travels, we know not ; but marvellous, not to say 
incredible, accounts of the number of species he has 
collected have been circulated in this country, t On the 
whole, therefore, the greater part of Brazil, large as it 
is, does not offer any expectations of much novelty in 
its feathered tribes, unless in such provinces as Goyaz, 
* This suspicion was unfortunately verified} for this able and indefati- 
gable zoologist was taken from us soon after he commenced publishing the 
zoological fruits of the expedition. 
f Since the above was written we have had the pleasure of a personal 
visit from Br. Natterer, whom we left in Brazil in 1817. He has only just 
returned to Kurope, having procured the astonishing number of 1070 species 
of birds in that vast empire. 
