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XXVII. Some Observations on the Bill of the Toucan : in a Letter to 
the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. K.B. P.R.S. H.M.L.S. 
By Thomas Stewart Traill, M.D. 
Read March 15, 1814. 
Sin, : 
our polite attention to me on former occasions emboldens me 
to trouble you with the following observations on the bill of the 
Toucan. nuts» Y Haile sine i | 
All systematic authors have described the bill of the genus 
Ramphastos as hollow. The Linnean character even begins, 
“ Rostrum maximum inane,” &c.; and Buffon has eloquently en- 
larged on the supposed error, or oversight of Nature, in furnish- 
ing so small a bird with a bill so: monstrous and useless. My 
friend Charles Waterton, Esq., who has lately returned from the 
interior of Guyana, had observed, that when a portion of the bill 
of a Toucan is shot away, the remainder bleeds profusely ; and 
on immersing the bill of a recently killed bird in hot water, he 
was enabled to detach from the exterior covering of the bill a 
horny substance, whieh filled its whole cavity, consisting of a 
delicate net-work of bony matter in the interior, surrounded by 
thin plates of the same material. On these bony partitions a 
great number of blood-vessels are distinctly ramified in the living 
animal. ‘This gentleman favoured me with a specimen thus pre- 
pared ; in carefully examining which, I found that the nostrils 
conducted to the internal cells of the substance within the upper 
mandible. 
