nt to another, so often practised by ants,
not only can the Dendrocolaptes (connected with our Creepers) be
seen following the moving trail, and preying on the ants and the
eggs themselves, but even the black Tanager abandons his usual
fruits for this more tempting delicacy. Our frugivorous and
baccivorous genera are also pretty numerous, and most of them are so
fond of insect food that they unite, as occasion offers, with the
insectivorous tribes.'

So it was once. Now a traveller, accustomed to the swarms of birds
which, not counting the game, inhabit an average English cover,
would be surprised and pained by the scarcity of birds in the
forests of this island.

We rode down toward the northern lowland, along a broad new road of
last year's making, terraced, with great labour, along the hill, and
stopped to visit one of those excellent Government schools which do
honour, first to that wise legislator, Lord Harris, and next to the
late Governor. Here, in the depths of the forest, where never
policeman or schoolmaster had been before, was a house of satin-wood
and cedar not two years old, used at once as police-station and
school, with a shrewd Spanish-speaking schoolmaster, and fifty-two
decent little brown children on the school-books, and getting, when
their lazy parents will send them, as good an education as they
would get in England. I shall have more to say on the education
system of Trinidad. All it seems to me to want, with its late
modifications, is compulsory attendance.

Soon turning down an old Indian path, we saw the Gulf once more, and
between us and it the sheet of cane cultivation, of which one estate
ran up to our feet, 'like a bright green bay entered by a narrow
strait among the dark forest.' Just before we came to it we passed
another pleasant sight: more Coolie settlers, who had had lands
granted them in lieu of the return passage to which they were
entitled, were all busily felling wood, putting up bamboo and palm-
leaf cabins, and settling themselves down, each one his own master,
yet near enough to the sugar-estates below to get remunerative work
whenever needful.

Then on, over slow miles (you must not trot beneath the burning mid-
day sun) of sandy stifling flat, between high canes, till we saw
with joy, through long vistas of straight traces, the mangrove
shrubbery which marked the sea. We turned into large sugar-works,
to be cooled with sherry a