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Show 772 MR. A. G. LUTLER ON THE GENUS PROTOGONIUS. [Dec. 2, When approached, they sometimes rise up three or four feet and hover in the air, chirping sharply, with breast towards the intruder. But the Cachilas are the tamest of feathered creatures, and usually creep reluctantly away on their little pink feet when approached. If the pedestrian is a stranger to their habits, they easily delude him into attempting their capture with his hat, so little is their fear of of man. To sing, the Cachila mounts upwards almost vertically, making at intervals a fluttering pause accompanied with a few hurried peculiar notes. When he has thus risen to a great height, but never beyond the sight as Azara says, he begins the descent slowly, the wings spread and inclining upwards ; descending, he pours out a continuous impressive strain, ending with a falling inflection or with two or three throat-notes as the bird pauses, fluttering, in mid air, and then renewed successively, till, when the songster is within a few feet of the earth, he reascends as before to continue the performance. They sometimes sing on the ground; but their strains are then weak and desultory. The Cachila raises two broods a year. The first brood is hatched about the middle of August-that is, from one to three months before other Passerine species begin laying. By anticipating the breeding-season, their early nests are exempted from the evil of parasitic eggs ; but, on the other hand, frosty nights and cold storms are probably as fatal to their broods as the instinct of the Molothrus. Their second brood is reared in December; and in that season a vast number of their nests contain parasitic eggs. The nest, placed within a slight depression in the earth under the grass, is sometimes dry and well lined with hair or fine roots, and sometimes composed of scanty materials loosely put together. During the solstitial season I have frequently found nests with frail roofs or shades built over them, the short and withered grass affording a poor protection from the meridian sun. Tbe eggs are four, oval, dirty white, spotted with dusky brown, often thickly mottled or entirely stained with the last colour. The manners of this species, wherever I have observed it, are the same ; it lives on the ground on open plains where the herbage and grass is short, and never perches ou trees. The song varies in intonation in different regions. 3. Revision of the Genus Protogonius. By A R T H U R G. BUTLER, F.L.S., F.Z.S., &c. [Received October 24, 1873.] (Plate LXIX.) The small Nymphalidian genus Protogonius has been long supposed to consist of only one extremely variable species, the varieties of which, however, are admirable copies of several species of Helico-noid Danainae; but since there is not the slightest ground for arri- |