EUMOMOTA. 465 
Meeting of the British Association held at Liverpool in 1837, by Mr. Sandbach, the 
Curator of the Museum of that town, to whom, so we are informed by Jardine and 
Selby, upwards of twenty specimens were brought by a vessel sailing from Campeche. 
One of these was acquired by Sir William Jardine and figured by Jardine and Selby in 
the following year. The bird described by Swainson as Crypticus superciliosus was doubt- 
less from the same source. The same Motmot was soon afterwards found in. Yucatan 
by Cabot, who gave it the name of Momotus yucatanensis, and it has been noticed by 
all subsequent travellers in that country. The only other portion of Mexican territory 
in which it occurs is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Sumichrast obtained specimens. 
From Tehuantepec it occurs all along the Pacific coast-region of Central America as far 
as Costa Rica, and is very abundant in some places in the hotter parts of the country. 
Thus, in March 1874, it was a very common bird all along the road between Escuintla 
in Guatemala and the port of San José. Further inland we met with it as high as the 
village of Palin, which is on the slope of the cordillera between Escuintla and Amatitlan. 
In the interior of Guatemala it occurs in the plains of Salama and Zacapa, a region of 
large cacti and mimosa trees. It is not a forest bird, but keeps to the second-growth 
woods and more open districts, and thus probably has increased considerably in 
numbers with the destruction of the older forests of the coast-region bordering the 
Pacific Ocean. 
On the eastern side of Central America we have, besides the records of it in Yucatan 
already mentioned, only notices of its occurrence at San Pedro in Honduras and in 
Chontales, where Belt met with it. It is also said to occur near Comayagua. In 
Costa Rica its range seems confined to the country bordering the Gulf of Nicoya and 
the Pacific Ocean. Beyond Costa Rica it has not been traced, so that Humomota 
superciliaris is one of the marked and characteristic species of Central America. 
It has been suggested that there are two forms of this species, a western and an 
eastern race—the former redder, the latter bluer. Variation to some extent certainly 
exists, but this appears to be individual and not localized in any way. 
In habits Hwmomota superciliaris is sluggish, fearless, and silent during the greater 
part of the year; but from the following interesting note on its breeding-habits from 
the pen of Mr. Robert Owen it would appear that it is both noisy and active during 
the breeding-season. He writes from San Gerénimo, Vera Paz, 21st May, 1860 :— 
“This appears to be the height of the breeding-season with the ‘Torovoces’ (=‘ Bull- 
voice,’ a local name for this species). They are in full song, if their croaking note 
may be so termed, and are as noisy and busy now as they are mute and torpid during 
the rest of the year. Ido not know of any sound that will convey a better idea of the 
note than that produced by the laboured respiration occurring after each time the 
air is exhausted in the lungs by the spasms of the hooping-cough. 
‘The nest of the ‘Torovoz’ is subterranean, and is usually found in the banks of 
rivers, or of watercourses which empty into them. The excavation is horizontal, and 
BIOL. CENTR.-AMER., Aves, Vol. IT., Judy 1895. 59 
