168 
BLUEFIELDS. 
most resound with the voices of feathered songsters. 
The beautiful park-like estates of the southern slopes 
of Jamaica present scenes peculiarly inviting and 
suitable for the winged orchestra to exercise its vocal 
talent ; — and the notes of melodious joy are pouring 
forth in them from earliest dawn to sunset ; — aye, 
long before dawn, and long after the veil of night 
has been outspread. The Swallows {Hirundo pceci- 
lomd) that shoot along in their arrowy traverses over 
the plains, now darting across the placid stream, now 
coursing far up in the thin air, almost lost in the 
glaring sun-beam, twitter sweetly as they pass, and 
now and then one and another sitting on the summit 
of a low tree commence a stammering song by no 
means deficient in music.'^ The Blue Martins 
* “ Ordinarily, in our livelong sunshine, our House Martin {H. 
‘pceciloma) is seen careering about his haunts, — in and out of caverns 
in the solitude of cliffs and rugged hills, and in and about sheds and 
galleries, in our social dwelling-places. When the vernal equinox has 
blown over, and has brought fitful showers of rain, and the House 
Martin has profited by the little puddles round about to collect mud to 
patch and extend the stucco-work of his grotto, he chatters to his 
mate between- whiles as he toils, a low muttering song, very guttural, 
and just barely musical ; and he continues this twittering talk during 
the unwearied hours he spends by her side, and with her nurslings, all 
through the summer. When, however, the autumnal season gathers 
stormy, and the overcast sky prepares us for deluging rains, he 
changes his habit, and with his habit his very voice. He then quits 
the cavern or the shed, and making a party of four or five, is seen 
perched on the upper dry limb of some neighbouring tree, singing a 
loud-voiced song, so different in tone and character from anything you 
may hear from him at any other time, that you cannot recognise the 
same bird in the wild and deep-toned ecstasy of what is then his 
musical humour. My attention was first called to this peculiarity last 
year by some friends who noticed the unusual song, in a road that 
