305 
daring a Cruise in the Caribbean Sea. 
Los Hermanos, and Los Testigos Islands (and, so far as 
1 am aware, in the Curasao Group also), but the flora 
and avifauna present the same general characteristics and 
differ in an appreciable way from those of the mainland 
as a whole. 
To one steaming up the Gulf of Cariaco nothing indeed 
could be much more striking than the strange contrast 
which is exhibited on the one hand by the Peninsula, with 
its arid, desolate, and schistose rocks only scantily clothed 
with cactus and mimosa scrub, and on the other by range 
after range of tall mountains, luxuriantly forest-clad, 
which mark the Secondary limestone formations of the 
mainland. 
We have, then, off the coast of Venezuela a chain of 
islands which, together with the Peninsula of Cariaco, 
represent the remains of what in all probability in a remote 
Primary age was one continuous and large tract of land, 
and exhibit an avifauna which in general can be distin¬ 
guished from that of the mainland. In an old French 
atlas this chain of islands is designated by the name <f Les 
Isles sous le vent/'’ They are, indeed, the real Leeward 
Islands of the old discoverers, and I am at a loss to account 
for the reason that the name has been applied to another 
and more northern group. 
My paper also includes notes on the birds of Swan 
Island and the Grand Cayman, both of which lie in the 
western end of the Caribbean Sea, I have added a few 
notes on some of the species met with in the islands of 
St. Vincent, Grenada, and Barbados. W r e have previously 
visited these islands on one or two occasions, but the birds 
which inhabit them are in general so well known that I 
confine myself to a few remarks which may possibly prove 
of interest. 
I take the islands in the order in which we visited them. 
I once more have to express my great indebtedness to 
Dr. Bowdler Sharpe, who has allowed me to work out my 
collection at the British Museum and given me much kind 
assistance. 
