“They are not common yet,” he would say.  “By and by they will be as thick as Floridas are now.”

“But don’t they stay here all winter?”

“No, sir; not the purples.”

“Are you certain about that?”

“Oh yes, sir.  I have hunted this river too much.  They couldn’t be here in the winter without my knowing it.”

I wondered whether he could be right, or partly right, notwithstanding the book statements to the contrary.  I notice that Mr. Chapman, writing of his experiences with this bird at Gainesville, says, “None were seen until May 25, when, in a part of the lake before unvisited,—­a mass of floating islands and ’bonnets,’—­I found them not uncommon.”  The boy’s assertions may be worth recording, at any rate.

In one place he fired suddenly, and as he put down the gun he exclaimed, “There!  I’ll bet I’ve shot a bird you never saw before.  It had a bill as long as that,” with one finger laid crosswise upon another.  He hauled the prize into the boat, and sure enough, it was a novelty,—­a king rail, new to both of us.  We had gone a little farther, and were passing a prairie, on which were pools of water where the boy said he had often seen large flocks of white ibises feeding (there were none there now, alas, though we crept up with all cautiousness to peep over the bank), when all at once I descried some sharp-winged, strange-looking bird over our heads.  It showed sidewise at the moment, but an instant later it turned, and I saw its long forked tail, and almost in the same breath its white head.  A fork-tailed kite! and purple gallinules were for the time forgotten.  It was performing the most graceful evolutions, swooping half-way to the earth from a great height, and then sweeping upward again.  Another minute, and I saw a second bird, farther away.  I watched the nearer one till it faded from sight, soaring and swooping by turns,—­its long, scissors-shaped tail all the while fully spread,—­but never coming down, as its habit is said to be, to skim over the surface of the water.  There is nothing more beautiful on wings, I believe:  a large hawk, with a swallow’s grace of form, color, and motion.  I saw it once more (four birds) over the St. Mark’s River, and counted the sight one of the chief rewards of my Southern winter.

At noon we rested and ate our luncheon in the shade of three or four tall palmetto-trees standing by themselves on a broad prairie, a place brightened by beds of blue iris and stretches of golden senecio,—­homelike as well as pretty, both of them.  Then we set out again.  The day was intensely hot (March 24), and my oarsman was more than half sick with a sudden cold.  I begged him to take things easily, but he soon experienced an almost miraculous renewal of his forces.  In one of the first of our after-dinner bonnet patches, he seized his gun, fired, and began to shout, “A purple! a purple!” He drew the bird in, as proud as a prince.  “There, sir!” he said;