and
peculiar trees enliven the picturesque landscape. Throughout the woods
and groves flit a variety of birds, whose dazzling colors defy the
palette of the artist. Here the loquacious parrot utters his harsh
natural notes; there the red flamingo watches by the shore of the
lagoon, the waters dyed by the reflection of his scarlet plumage. It
would require a volume to describe the vegetable and animal kingdom of
Cuba, but among the most familiar birds are the golden robin, the
bluebird, the catbird, the Spanish woodpecker, the gaudy-plumed
paroquet, and the pedoreva, with its red throat and breast and its
pea-green head and body. There is also a great variety of wild
pigeons, blue, gray, and white; the English lady-bird, with a blue
head, scarlet breast, and green and white back; the indigo-bird, the
golden-winged woodpecker, the ibis, and many smaller species, like the
humming-bird. Of this latter family there are said to be sixty
different varieties, each sufficiently individualized in size and
other peculiarities to be easily identified by ornithologists. Some
of these birds are actually no larger in body than butterflies, and
with not so large a spread of wing. A humming-bird's nest, composed of
cotton interlaced with horse-hair, was shown the author at Buena
Esperanza, a plantation near Guines. It was about twice the size of a
lady's thimble, and contained two eggs, no larger than common peas.
The nest was a marvel of perfection, the cotton being bound cunningly
and securely together by the long horse-hairs, of which there were not
more than three or four. Human fingers could not have done it so
deftly. Probably the bird that built the nest and laid the eggs did
not weigh, all fledged, over half an ounce! Parrots settle on the sour
orange trees when the fruit is ripe, and fifty may be secured by a net
at a time. The Creoles stew and eat them as we do pigeons; the flesh
is tough, and as there are plenty of fine water-fowl and marsh birds
about the lagoons as easily procured, one is at a loss to account for
the taste that leads to eating parrots. The brown pelican is seen in
great numbers sailing lazily over the water and dipping for fish.

Strange is the ubiquity of the crows; one sees them in middle India,
China, and Japan. They ravage our New England cornfields, and in
Ceylon,--equatorial Ceylon,--they absolutely swarm. When one,
therefore, finds them saucy, noisy, thieving, even in Cuba, it is not
surprising that