OCR Text |
Show • 144 represented here during the dry season. This may be accounted for from the fact that this extensive region is diversified with rudely-cultivated farms, old fields overgrown with brambles and weeds, impenetrable thorny woods and forests of large trees, interspersed here and there with stagnant lagoons and lakes, through the center of which wind the clear waters of the Rio Mazatlan; there abounds animal life in great abundance; the old neglected fields, overgrown with matted vegetation, harbor innumerable field- mice and other rodents; here various speoies of lizards and snakes dart through the thickets when scared from their sunny beds. The lagoons furnish other reptiles; swarms of ducks and various kinds of water- fowl resort to their slimy waters: the woods are enlivened with great numbers of birds, all of which furnfch to the different species of hawks their favorite prey. " The remarkable species which heads this article I discovered in this locality; it is entirely new to me, and I have not yet seen it mentioned in any volume at my command; the specimen has been sent to the National Institution at Washington for identification. The flight of this hawk seems rather heavy, resembling somewhat the common fish- hawk, the wings appearing very broad and the tail remarkably short. Upon examining the contents of the stomach, after skinning it, I found only the remains of fish, one of which had been but freshly devoured; it was a species of perch found in the lagoons and rivers of this region."-[ Col. A. J. Grayson, in Mem. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist. 1874, p. 302. | / |