Another numerous tribe of tropical birds is known by the name of Chatterers. I do not know what they are called by the ornithologists; but thus are they designated by the inhabitants, from the peculiar sounds which they utter, (being not unlike those of a congress of spinsters, sitting in committee of the whole on some grand question of scandal.) They are distinguished by the epithets—red-breasted, purple-throated, firebirds, pumpadore, red-headed, gold-headed, white-throated, white-capped, purple-shouldered, and Mahometan. The first five migrate; the last five stay at home. Of the former, the firebird is so named from the fact that, in stuffed specimens, the color is sometimes changed by the application of fire. Its natural hue is a dark crimson, but it is susceptible of being changed, by the application of heat, into a rich vermilion. Of the latter, the purple-shouldered is the most rare and the most beautiful. The upper parts of its wings or shoulders are the deepest purple; the remainder of the wings is interspersed with blue, and they end in black. Its back is blue mingled with black; its breast is a delicate blue, and the lower part of its neck is a dark crimson. I describe the male bird only; for (unlike bipeds _without_ feathers) it monopolises the beauty of the species. The female is very plain, though there seems to be a certain winning modesty about her, for all her homely looks. The sumptuously attired male, (“Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these,”) if his choice of a partner were left to himself—which I doubt—must have been guided by a taste as unsophisticated as that of the praiseworthy Cock-Robin, when he courted Jenny Wren, who “Always wore her old brown gown, And never dressed so fine!” While on the subject of homeliness, I may as well conclude it by alluding to a bird, which, on account of its hideousness, the negroes call “Old Witch.” What a very mortifying circumstance it must be to be so ugly, when every body else is so bewitchingly fair! Don’t you think so, Miss Smith? (I do not mean the Miss Smith, who is reading this article, but another.) Before passing to an account of the third and last family, which I shall try to describe—being by far the most numerous, the strangest, and the most charming of all the tropical birds—I will detain the reader for a moment with an account of two rare species of water birds. They are in general so classed, because, like rails, they frequent reedy ponds and marshes and the borders of streams. I select these two species, because the one is very curious and the other is of a kind with which classical associations are connected, and because they admirably serve to show how wide and fertile a field of interesting investigation lies before the student in this particular realm of Natural History.