grey-green artichoke-like leaves. The disc of the great thorny blossom was as broad as that of a sunflower, purple in colour, delicately frosted with white; on this flat disc several insects were feeding--flies, fireflies, and small wasps--and I paused for a few minutes in my walk to watch them. Suddenly a small misty object flew swiftly downwards past my face, and paused motionless in the air an inch or two above the rim of the flower. Once more my lost humming-bird, which I remembered so well! The exquisitely graceful form, half circled by the misty moth-like wings, the glittering green and velvet-black mantle, and snow-white tail spread open like a fan--there it hung like a beautiful bird-shaped gem suspended by an invisible gossamer thread. One--two--three moments passed, while I gazed, trembling with rapturous excitement, and then, before I had time to collect my faculties and make a forlorn attempt to capture it with my hat, away it flew, gliding so swiftly on the air that form and colour were instantly lost, and in appearance it was only an obscure grey line traced rapidly along the low sky and fading quickly out ol sight. And that was the last I ever saw of it. The case of this small "winged gem," still wandering nameless in the wilds, reminds me of yet another bird seen and lost, also remarkable for its diminutive size. For years I looked for it, and when the wished-for opportunity came, and it was in my power to secure it, I refrained; and Fate punished me by never permitting me to see it again. On several occasions while riding on the pampas I had caught glimpses of this minute bird flitting up mothlike, with uncertain tremulous flight, and again dipping into the weeds, tall grass, or thistles. Its plumage was yellowish in hue, like sere dead herbage, and its extremely slender body looked longer and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length of its tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I knew that it was a Synallaxis--a genus of small birds of the Woodhewer family. Now, as I have said in a former chapter, these are wise little birds, more interesting--I had almost said more beautiful--in their wisdom, or wisdom-simulating instincts, than the quatzel in its resplendent green, or the cock-of-the-rock in its vivid scarlet and orange mantle. Wrens and mocking-birds have melody for their chief attraction, and the name of each kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain kind of sweet music; we think of swifts and swallows in connection with the mysterious migratory instinct; and humming-birds have a glittering mantle, and the miraculous motions necessary to display its ever-changing iridescent beauty. In like manner, the homely Dendrocolaptidae possess the genius for building, and an account of one of these small birds without its nest would be like a biography of Sir Christopher Wren that made no mention of his works. It was not strange then that when I saw this small