To the sportsman they are most annoying, by telling every other bird and animal of his approach: to the traveller in the country they may possibly, as Molina says, do good, by warning him of the midnight robber.

During the breeding season, they attempt, like our peewits, by feigning to be wounded, to draw away from their nests dogs and other enemies.
The eggs of this bird are esteemed a great delicacy.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1833.
To the seventh posta at the foot of the Sierra Tapalguen.

The country was quite level, with a coarse herbage and a soft peaty soil.

The hovel was here remarkably neat, the posts and rafters being made of about a dozen dry thistle-stalks bound together with thongs of hide; and by the support of these Ionic-like columns, the roof and sides were thatched with reeds.

We were here told a fact, which I would not have credited, if I had not had partly ocular proof of it; namely, that, during the previous night, hail as large as small apples, and extremely hard, had fallen with such violence as to kill the greater number of the wild animals.