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A slave boy assigned to that duty read aloud the names of the souvenirs: "Silver s ham," a ham was brought in with some silver vinegar cruets on top of it; "cervical" something soft for the neck a piece of the cervix neck of a sheep was brought in; "serisapia" after wit "and contumelia" insult we were given must wafers and an apple-melon and a phallus contus ; "porri" leeks "and persica," he picked up a whip and a knife; "passeres" sparrows" and a fly trap," the answer was raisins uva passa and Attic honey; "cenatoria" a dinner toga "and forensia" business dress he handed out a piece of meat suggestive of dinner and a note-book suggestive of business ; "canale" chased by a dog "and pedale" pertaining to the foot , a hare and a slipper were brought out; "lamphrey" murena "and a letter," he held up a mouse mus and a frog rana tied together, and a bundle of beet beta the Greek letter beta . We laughed long and loud, there were a thousand of these jokes, more or less, which have now escaped my memory.
The systematists have placed them in this niche of the avicular scheme, not only because they are able to perch like other passeres on twigs and small branches, but also because they have the foot of the true perching bird, with three toes in front and one, well developed, in the rear.
Odd as it may seem to the uninformed, the nuthatches belong to the order of passeres or perching birds, in spite of their creeping habits.
On opening the stomach of the humming-bird, dead insects are almost always found there. Next to the humming-birds, the cotingas display the gayest plumage. They are of the order of passeres, and you number five species betwixt the sea-coast and the rock Saba. Perhaps the scarlet cotinga is the richest of the five, and is one of those birds which are found in the deepest recesses of the forest.
It is the first example of a nocturnal bird among the Passeres dentirostrati. Large white spots of the form of a heart, and bordered with black, mark the head, wings, and tail. The eyes of the bird, which are dazzled by the light of day, are blue, and smaller than those of the goatsucker. The spread of the wings, which are composed of seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is three feet and a half.
On the mountain heights, in the thick forests and open plains, wherever flowers and insects exist, there one or more species make their home throughout the continent. Lovely as are the humming-birds, the cotingas, belonging to the order of Passeres, and of which there are several species, almost rival them in beauty of plumage.
I have offered rewards for a specimen, but without success. The only European who had seen and fired at one agreed with the natives that it is of the size of a pigeon, with a long tail. I believe it is a Podargus or Night Hawk." II. PASSERES. Swallows.
Schufeldt, has come to the conclusion that swifts are only greatly modified Passeres, and that the humming-birds should form an order by themselves.
It has the mouth of the goat-suckers and procnias, and the port of those vultures whose crooked beaks are surrounded with stiff silky hairs. Suppressing, with M. Cuvier, the order of picae, we must refer this extraordinary bird to the passeres, the genera of which are connected with each other by almost imperceptible transitions.
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