It is one of the commonest birds of Jamaica, both in the lowlands and the hilly districts, nor is it rare even at the elevation of the Bluefields Peaks. It seems to delight in the fruit and timber-trees, which are thickly planted in the pens, and around the homesteads of the southern coast, and everywhere, in fact, where insects are numerous. The larger kinds of insects form the prey of this species as of the former. I have seen one pursue with several doublings a large _Cetonia_, which, however, having escaped, the bird instantly snapped up a _Cicada_ of still greater bulk, and began to beat it to kill it, while the poor insect sung shrilly as it was being devoured. It frequently resorts to a tree that overhangs still water, for the purpose of hawking after the dragon-flies that skim over the surface. The size of these insects, and their projecting wings, would seem to make the swallowing of them a matter of some difficulty; for I have noticed that the bird jerks the insect round by little and little, without letting it go, till the head points inward, when it is swallowed more readily. Mr. Hill has noticed a very interesting trait in this bird, so frequently as to be properly called a habit. It will play with a large beetle as a cat with a mouse, no doubt after its appetite has been sated. Sitting on a twig, and holding the beetle in its beak, it suddenly permits it to drop, then plunging downward, it gets beneath the insect before it has had time to reach the ground, and turning upward catches it as it falls. It sometimes continues this sport a quarter of an hour. In the winter season, the seeds of the Tropic-birch (_Bursera_) appear to constitute a large portion of the food of our Tyrannidæ. One day in January, I observed two Petcharies on a birch-tree, fluttering in an unusual manner, and stood to watch their proceedings. I found they were feeding on the ripe berries, which they plucked off in a singular manner. Each bird sitting on a twig, seized a berry in his beak, then throwing back his head till he was in a perpendicular position, tugged till the stalk gave way, his wings being expanded, and vibrated all the while to prevent him from falling. Yet, even at this season, they contrive to fill their craws with insects; for one which I dissected the next day, had its stomach filled with hymenoptera and coleoptera, among which were the fragments of a most brilliant little _Buprestis_, the possession of which I envied it. I observed that the stomach was protuberant below the sternum, as in the cuckoos. At this early season, the time of incubation was near; for the ovary of this specimen contained an egg as large as a small marble; and my lad who shot it, told me that this one and its mate were toying and pursuing each other around a tall manchioneel-tree, on one of whose upper limbs he discovered a nest nearly finished.