VERTEBRATA. 



221 



self in some of the toucans. With the latter it is of a delicately 

 cellular structure, and therefore very light. 



The Scansores do not climb, or rather creep, in the sense of 

 woodpeckers and creepers ; some of them live on the ground and 

 are good runne>rs ; they have a short flight, and place their nests 

 in holes of decaying trees, or, as in some of the cuckoos, they lay 

 their eggs in the nests of other birds. Indicator, however, builds 

 a complex bottle-shaped nest. They feed mostly on insects and 

 fruits, the toucans and some of the ground-cuckoos also on small 

 birds and reptiles : the former are known to "regurgitate partially 

 digested food, and after submitting it to a rude kind of masti- 

 cation by their enormous beaks, again to swallow it." 



The cuckoo ( Cuculus canorus) is the only British bird belonging 

 to this order, which includes also the plantain -eaters and the 

 toucans. Coliidas are South-African birds with no obvious 

 allies ; in them all the toes are turned forwards. Murie thinks 

 that they are an annectent group between " Coccygomorphas and 

 Coracomorphae," which he names Coliomorphas (not the Colio- 

 morphaa of Sundevall). G. E. Gray placed them in the Coniros- 

 tres. They have the peculiar habit of hanging by one foot with the 

 head downwards. 



This order corresponds to the second group of Huxley's Coccy- 

 gomorphas, except that he includes Galbulidse. To this second 

 group he thinks it may be desirable to restrict the term. The 

 order also forms part of the Zygodactyli and of the Picariae of 

 the older authors, which included the Volitores and woodpeckers, 

 and for some writers the parrots and chatterers also. 



Collide. 



Colius. 



