SCANSORIiE. 327 



ORDER III. 



SCANSORIiE. 



This order is composed of those birds whose external toe 

 is directed backwards like the thumb, by which conformation 

 they are the better enabled to support the weight of their 

 bodies, and of which certain genera take advantage in cling- 

 ing to and climbing upon trees. It is from this that they 

 have received the common name of Climbers, which in strict- 

 ness is not applicable to all of them, as there are many true 

 Climbers which by the disposition of their toes cannot belong 

 to this order, instances of which we have already seen in the 

 Creeper and Nuthatch. 



The Scansorise usually nestle in the hollows of old trees; 

 their powers of flight are middling ; their food, like that of 

 the Passeringe, consists of insects or fruit, in proportion as 

 their beak is more or less stout ; some of them, the Wood- 

 peckers for instance, have peculiar means for obtaining it. 



The hind part of the sternum, in most of the genera, has a 

 double emargination ; in the Parrots, there is merely a hole, 

 and very often that is completely filled up. 



Galbula, Briss. 



The Jacamars are closely allied to the Kingfishers by their elon- 

 gated sharp-pointed beak, the upper ridge of which is angular, and 

 by their short ffeet, the anterior toes of which are almost wholly 

 united; these toes, however, are not precisely the same as those of 

 the Kingfishers; their plumage moreover is not so smooth, and 



N.B. The B. galeatus, of which we only have the head, Enl. 933, and which 

 Vaillant erroneously considers as an aquatic bird, is a true Hornbill, but whose 

 excrescence on the beak is invested with an excessively thick horn, the anterior 

 portion of it particularly. 



See the general article on the Hcrnbills, by Temminck, in the text of the Planches 

 Colorizes. P.S. It is to General Hardwick that we are at length indebted for a 

 knowledge of the B. galeatus, which proves to be, in fact, a true Hornbill, with a 

 long cuneiform tail; black; white belly; the tail yellowish, with a black band near 

 the end. Lin. Tr. XIV, pi. xxviii. 



