THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. : 165 
and you have the “unclean beast,’’ the scavenger of the 
country. They sit about on the fences, hang about 
the back yards, and eat anything. In the Mexican 
towns they generally roost at night on the roofs of the 
churches, and at Vera Cruz they covered the whole dome of 
the Cathedral flying in at dusk and fighting for the best 
places even to the cross on the summit. They are protected 
in the United States, but in Jamaica they are said to kill 
young chickens, and are often shot in consequence. 
Professor Koebele and I used to get quite a number of 
fine hawk-moths and other insects in the paved court of the 
Iterbuzdie Hotel. Here there was a big electric light, and we 
used to get down before the sweepers cleaned up the place; 
during some of our tramps through the suburbs or little vil- 
lages we often found interesting specimens. on the walls 
where the electric lights were fixed. In the central parks, 
common in all Mexican towns, we also found very fine frog- 
hoppers, belonging to the Membracidae. 
plantations, a few miles out of the town, we captured a but- 
terfly (Hesperid), the larva of which has the curious habit 
(for a butterfly) of burrowing in ant fleshy leaf and pupating 
there when full grown. 
In the argave 
In the tropical country, ERENRE Merelos, I saw the im- 
mense green “‘Katydid’’ fly up from the grass, as we were 
in the train; and on the same trip I saw the beautiful ‘‘Red 
Cardenal,” one of the finches that has a wide range to tlie 
Southern States. It was in the Southern portion, however, 
below Vera Cruz, where I saw the rich tropical forest and 
the great owl butterfly, the great J/Zorphos and ‘other South 
American types, but I also was almost eaten alive by a small 
forest “‘tick’ that didnot remain in the skin, but simply 
raised little blisters wherever he sat down, and which lasted 
for weeks. There were puma and deer in the forest, 
did not come across any. 
The open spots were carpeted with a delicate sensitive 
plant that folded up its leaves so rapidly that one’s footsteps 
made a regular print whenever he walked through it. There 
were ants of all kinds, and great wasp nests in the trees that 
I nearly came to grief over as I went to examine one, think- 
ing it was a termites’ nest. The fire-flies swarmed at night, 
and in the early morning the forest resounded with bird 
notes. In Cuba, birds are not particularly numerous, but I 
was not in the northern forest-clad country. In the Isle of 
Pines, on the northern side, there are immense flocks of 
large green parrots, that are caught and exported to the 
United States. There is a gréat quantity of level jungle 
country through the centre of Cuba, where the parasitic 
but we 
