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Show 748 LETTER FROM MR. W. H. HUDSON. [Nov. 15, Manatee (Manatus americanus), as deduced from a fresh specimen of this animal forwarded to this Society in a living state by Mr. G. W . Latimer, of Porto Rico, C.M.Z.S., in April 1866, but which had unfortunately died just before reaching Southampton. This paper will be published in full in the Society's • Transactions.' The following (eighth) letter on the Ornithology of Buenos Ayres, addressed to the Secretary by Mr. W . H. Hudson, C.M.Z.S., was read : - Buenos Ayres, May 19, 1870. D E A R SIR,-While you are just beginning to experience and observe the reviving influences of spring, the bitter weather of the last few days " feelingly persuades " us that the cold season has come to Buenos Ayres. W e have already had enough of rain, wind, frost, and cloudy days to make this May one of unusual gloom. The wild and melancholy notes of Winter Snipes and Plovers, that are always most numerous in severe seasons, are constantly heard, while of the summer visitors not a solitary straggler is to be seen, and the trees, that according to some theorists have no business to be growing on the Pampas, are fast losing their few remaining leaves. It is interesting to observe the effect of the cold weather on some of our resident birds-for example, the Urraca (Cyanocorax pileatus), to which probably the first Spanish settlers gave this name from a fancy that it resembles the Magpie of Europe. The long tail of the Urraca, so awkward in windy weather, its slow laborious flight, scanty plumage, and climbing feet, in all things so different from the true Pampas birds, prove it to have been adapted to a hot climate in a country abounding in forests. It is, I believe, common in South Brazil, Paraguay, and the Chaco. The manner in which many species inhabiting these regions reach and become natives of this country I have tried to explain in former letters. The Urraca and birds like it with short wings, that obtain their food in woody districts, could only have extended so far into a country ill adapted to them by gradually advancing along the unbroken line of woods that border the Plata and its tributaries. In this littoral forest the Urraca is most numerous, becoming rarer the further we advance west from it; but though it feeds much on the ground, it is never seen far from the vicinity of trees, except, as happens with the Pampas Woodpecker (Colaptes campestris), when passing from one isolated wood or plantation to another. The Urraca is in winter a miserable bird, and appears to suffer more than any other creature from cold. In the evening the flock, usually composed of from ten to twenty individuals, gathers on a thick branch of a tree sheltered from the wind, the birds crowding close together for warmth, and some of them roosting perched on the backs of their fellows. I once saw six birds roosting in this manner-two of them resting on the tree, perched on the branch, and one on their backs, so that they formed a perfect pyramid. But |