We slept that night, some in beds, some in hammocks, some on the floor, with the rich warm night wind rushing down through all the house; and then were up once more in the darkness of the dawn, to go down and bathe at a little cascade, where a feeble stream dribbled under ferns and balisiers over soft square limestone rocks like the artificial rocks of the Serpentine, and those—­copied probably from the rocks of Fontainebleau—­which one sees in old French landscapes.  But a bathe was hardly necessary.  So drenched was the vegetation with night dew, that if one had taken off one’s clothes at the house, and simply walked under the bananas, and through the tanias and maize which grew among them, one would have been well washed ere one reached the stream.  As it was, the bathers came back with their clothes wet through.  No matter.  The sun was up, and half an hour would dry all again.

One object, on the edge of the forest, was worth noticing, and was watched long through the glasses; namely, two or three large trees, from which dangled a multitude of the pendant nests of the Merles:  {209} birds of the size of a jackdaw, brown and yellow, and mocking-birds, too, of no small ability.  The pouches, two feet long and more, swayed in the breeze, fastened to the end of the boughs with a few threads.  Each had, about half-way down, an opening into the round sac below, in and out of which the Merles crept and fluttered, talking all the while in twenty different notes.  Most tropic birds hide their nests carefully in the bush:  the Merles hang theirs fearlessly in the most exposed situations.  They find, I presume, that they are protected enough from monkeys, wild cats, and gato-melaos (a sort of ferret) by being hung at the extremity of the bough.  So thinks M. Leotaud, the accomplished describer of the birds of Trinidad.  But he adds with good reason:  ’I do not, however, understand how birds can protect their nestlings against ants; for so large is the number of these insects in our climes, that it would seem as if everything would become their prey.’

And so everything will, unless the bird murder be stopped.  Already the parasol-ants have formed a warren close to Port of Spain, in what was forty years ago highly cultivated ground, from which they devastate at night the northern gardens.  The forests seem as empty of birds as the neighbourhood of the city; and a sad answer will soon have to be given to M. Leotaud’s question:—­

’The insectivorous tribes are the true representatives of our ornithology.  There are so many which feed on insects and their larvae, that it may be asked with much reason, What would become of our vegetation, of ourselves, should these insect destroyers disappear?  Everywhere may be seen’ (M.  L. speaks, I presume, of five-and-twenty years ago:  my experience would make me substitute for his words, ‘Hardly anywhere can be seen’) ’one of these insectivora in pursuit or seizure of its