TODIES, 399 



U. S. National Museum. The shaded parts indicate the central tail-feathers, the 

 bases of which are still in the sheaths; they are only half grown, and have not yet 

 reached the end of the next pair; still they are perfectly racket-shaped, only that the 

 discs are larger than usual, so that it may be presumed that any future denudation would 

 take place from the nude stern down towards the end of the feather. This point is of 

 some importance, since we find that the denudation of the full grown feather upwards 

 never does proceed farther than the tips of the next pair. Fig. 197^1 represents a 

 feather which may help to solve the question. In feathers for some reason or other not 

 in prime condition, or part of which are destined by a regularly returning process to 

 fall off, we find by holding them up towards the light, fine transparent lines running 

 across the barbs like strings of minute holes. These so-called 'hunger-marks' indi- 



<j O 



cate where the barbs are going to break. In the figure, drawn from a specimen in the 

 National Museum in Washington, such a line is visible, and the tips of the outer 

 barbs have already broken off. It would not be particularly surprising if the bird 

 subsequently purposely removed the defective barbs, but I see no reason why it may 

 not be assumed, that these already broken barbs may not die entirely off at their in- 

 sertion, being removed by the serrated beak of the bird when preening its chief 

 ornament. This would account for Mr. Bartlett's having seen the broken barbs fall- 

 ing from the bird's bill. If this be the true solution, then there is no room for the 

 theory that the voluntary trimming through several generations has produced the 

 narrowness of the webs before the discs even in the untrimmed feathers. The species 

 figured (Jllomotu's momotci) has no disc-like expansion. It lives in tropical South 

 America, and is the oldest known of the group. 



Garrod originally referred the Momotidaa to the Passeriformes without tufts to the 

 oil gland and with casca ; but afterwards finding by actual dissection that caeca were 

 absent, and that some species had minute tufts, he removed them to the Piciformes. 

 As to the TODIDAE of which he seems to have dissected none, he remarks, however, 

 that they almost certainly form a single family with the motmots, adding that he had 

 been able from a skin to determine that they are synpelmous in exactly the same 

 manner as the motmot. Forbes has since ascertained that colic casca are present, and 

 that simultaneously the oil-gland is strongly tufted. Osteologically Momotidae and 

 Todidaa are nearly allied, though the latter have no vorner, and their manubrium sterni 

 shows tendency to bifurcation. Here are a few of Dr. Murie's remarks : " It would 

 seem that where outward appearance has swayed, naturalists judged Todus as having 

 alliance with the fly-catchers or the motmots; but where anatomical evidence has 

 been relied on, the kingfishers and bee-eaters are the groups with which it carried 

 family likeness. It results from my investigation, and a summing up of the labors of 

 others, that its nearest living allies undoubtedly are the motmots and kingfishers ; but 

 it presents such aberrance that it ought not to be ranked amongst either, but in 

 proximity as a separate division the Todidae equivalent to the Momotidse." 



The Todidae consist only of a single genus of half a dozen forms, which arc con- 

 fined to some of the West Indian Islands. The typical and oldest known species, 

 Todus todus (or T. vfn'di*), figured in the accompanying cut, shows them to be sm:ill 

 (the figure is natural size), somewhat kingfisher-like birds, with syndactyle feet, long 

 and flattened beak with minute serrations along the edge, a short tail, and a plumage 

 which above is bright parrot green, below whitish tinged with faint greenish and 

 yellow, while the throat is of a brilliant poppy red. Mr. P. II. Gosse describes the 

 bill as above horny red, beneath pale crimson. The same author speaks of its habits 



