ish meadows; and unless something is done to save the birds, the
cane and other crops will surely suffer in their turn. A gun-
licence would be, it seems, both unpopular and easily evaded in a
wild forest country. A heavy export tax on bird-skins has been
proposed. May it soon be laid on, and the vegetable wealth of the
island saved, at the expense of a little less useless finery in
young ladies' hats.

So we shall see and hear but few birds round Port of Spain, save the
black vultures {87a}--Corbeaux, as they call them here; and the
black 'tick birds,' {87b} a little larger than our English
blackbird, with a long tail and a thick-hooked bill, who perform for
the cattle here the same friendly office as is performed by
starlings at home. Privileged creatures, they cluster about on
rails and shrubs within ten feet of the passer, while overhead in
the tree-tops the 'Qu'est ce qu'il dit,' {87c} a brown and yellow
bird, who seems almost equally privileged and insolent, inquires
perpetually what you say. Besides these, swallows of various kinds,
little wrens, {87d} almost exactly like our English ones, and night-
hawking goat-suckers, few birds are seen. But, unseen, in the
depths of every wood, a songster breaks out ever and anon in notes
equal for purity and liveliness to those of our English thrush, and
belies the vulgar calumny that tropic birds, lest they should grow
too proud of their gay feathers, are denied the gift of song.

One look, lastly, at the animals which live, either in cages or at
liberty, about the house. The queen of all the pets is a black and
gray spider monkey {88} from Guiana--consisting of a tail which has
developed, at one end, a body about twice as big as a hare's; four
arms (call them not legs), of which the front ones have no thumbs,
nor rudiments of thumbs; and a head of black hair, brushed forward
over the foolish, kindly, greedy, sad face, with its wide,
suspicious, beseeching eyes, and mouth which, as in all these
American monkeys, as far as we have seen, can have no expression,
not even that of sensuality, because it has no lips. Others have
described the spider monkey as four legs and a tail, tied in a knot
in the middle: but the tail is, without doubt, the most important
of the five limbs. Wherever the monkey goes, whatever she does, the
tail is the standing-point, or rather hanging-point. It takes one
turn at least round something or other, pr