Snipe are plentiful during the winter months, being found in swampy lagoons and small streams; they are usually fat, and excellent eating. There are two kinds of teal, a blue and a brown, both of which are abundant. Golden plover and sandpipers abound, and as you ride along the spur-winged plover, or "pteru-pteru" rises with its shrill cry, and wheels round and round over one's head. Quite a number of small birds inhabit the country, and the plumage of some of them is very beautiful. There is the scissor-bird, with its curious tail; the oven-bird, which will make a round nest of mud, often as large as a man's head, on the top of a gatepost, quite close to a house where people are constantly passing; and others, with all the varying shades of yellow and black. Large flocks of the small green grey-breasted parakeet take up their abode in the woods, and make the whole place resound with their chatterings. A species of wood-dove is also very common, and affords good sport. Amongst the numerous spiders is the "tarantula," which is alarming, and its bite venomous, also another equally large grey spider, which is very pugnacious, and will jump up at you when disturbed. There is also a minute insect of the nature of a harvest-bug, called the "bicho colorado" (or red insect), which abounds during hot weather in summer, but disappears during the winter, and when the temperature is cold. It is a great nuisance, burying itself in one's skin, and causing great itching and irritation, and often producing sores on the human body by no means easy to heal. Mosquitos and flies of course are numerous, particularly near woods, and especially near water. There are several kinds of snakes, amongst them the coral snake, which is venomous, and a pretty little green snake, which hangs by its tail from the branches of a tree, so exactly like the green pod of a flowering creeper that it is difficult to tell one from the other. The Frasers stayed a fortnight at La Esperanza, getting several days' good shooting. They then returned to Monte Video, apparently well pleased with their visit.