THE LIVING WORLD. 
325 
“ With many of the feathered race, he pays the common tribute of a 
morning and evening song; and, even when the meridian sun has shut in 
silence the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the campanero 
still cheers the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, 
then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll and again a 
pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, 
and so on. Actaeon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her 
evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so 
sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero.” 
The “horn” of the bell-bird is only erect while the creature is excited 
and during the resonant cry, and when the bird is at rest it hangs loosely on 
the side of the face. Not until within the last few 
years has anything concerning the nesting habits 
of this bird been known. Recent travellers through 
Guiana have at length determined the fact, however, 
that during the breeding season 
the bell-bird retires to higher 
ground, and, invariably, to a 
rocky region, and selects a spot 
usually within a crevice or be¬ 
tween two large rocks ; here it 
digs a hole nearly twelve inches 
deep, which is lined with grasses 
rather roughly arranged, on 
which it lays two white eggs. 
The nest is so securely hidden 
from view that only by the 
greatest accident would it be 
discovered. 
SINGING BIRDS. 
If I were to undertake the 
labor of describing all the forest 
warblers of the world, prepara¬ 
tion would be necessary for an 
enormous volume, which, per¬ 
haps, no publisher could be urged to undertake. The species are so numerous 
that every clime has received from God the cheerful blessing of song birds, 
which vie with the flowers for supremacy in the esteem of mankind. How 
strange the fact, that among the most gorgeous-plumaged birds of the world we 
find no songsters ; that those of sweetest tongue are almost invariably birds of 
sombre feathers. The fable of the peacock’s cry to Jupiter applies not only to 
that creature but to all birds quite as well; but while the woods are filled with 
the trilling melody of sweet singers that charms our ears, our eyes are not 
slighted, for on every side of sylvan dale, on bush, tree, ground and stem, sit 
or flit the most brilliant creatures, which represent the scenery of the world’s 
theatre as the song birds represent nature’s orchestra. We cannot all be actors, 
some must be spectators, others scene shifters, and the bright-plumaged birds 
play a no less important part than the singers, because they lend an equal 
