elegant birds described by Buffon as belonging to Cayenne are to be met
with in Demerara, but it is only by an indefatigable naturalist that they
are to be found.

The scarlet curlew breeds in innumerable quantities in the muddy islands on
the coasts of Pomauron; the egrets and crabiers in the same place. They
resort to the mud-flats at ebbing water, while thousands of sandpipers and
plovers, with here and there a spoonbill and flamingo, are seen amongst
them. The pelicans go farther out to sea, but return at sundown to the
courada-trees. The humming-birds are chiefly to be found near the flowers
at which each of the species of the genus is wont to feed. The pie, the
gallinaceous, the columbine and passerine tribes resort to the fruit-
bearing trees.

You never fail to see the common vulture where there is carrion. In passing
up the river there was an opportunity of seeing a pair of the king of the
vultures; they were sitting on the naked branch of a tree, with about a
dozen of the common ones with them. A tiger had killed a goat the day
before; he had been driven away in the act of sucking the blood, and not
finding it safe or prudent to return, the goat remained in the same place
where he had killed it; it had begun to putrefy, and the vultures had
arrived that morning to claim the savoury morsel.

At the close of day the vampires leave the hollow trees, whither they had
fled at the morning's dawn, and scour along the river's banks in quest of
prey. On waking from sleep the astonished traveller finds his hammock all
stained with blood. It is the vampire that hath sucked him. Not man alone,
but every unprotected animal, is exposed to his depredations; and so gently
does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood that, instead of being roused,
the patient is lulled into a still profounder sleep. There are two species