68 FISSIKOSTRES NOCTURXI. 



and only sally from tlieir hiding-places during the 

 night, or at least after sunset. Their nests are built 

 on the rocky walls of caverns, in which they rear 

 their young. 



The typical species — 



Tlie Gruacharo, or Trinidad Goatsucker [Steatomis* 

 Caripensis), known in tli(; tropical regions of America as 

 the " Oil-bird," is about the size of a pigeon. Unlike the 

 otlier species of Goatsuckers, the Guacharos feed entirely 

 upon fruits and seeds. For the sake of the oil which they 

 furnish, numbers of the young are destroyed every year. 

 The nestlings are immediately opened, and the fat re- 

 moved from them ; it is afterwards melted in clay pots 

 and stored up for use. The oil thus obtained is semi- 

 fluid, transparent, and inodorous, and so pure that it may 

 be kept more than a year without becoming rancid. 

 The most noted locality for this oil-harvest is a cavern at 

 Oaripe, called the Cueva del Guacharo. Into this cave, 

 as we are told by Humboldt, the Indians enter once a 

 year, about the festival of St. John. They take with 

 tliem long poles, with which they destroy all the nests 

 within reach, aud thus kill many thousands of the young 

 brood, while the poor Oil-birds, as if to defend their nest- 

 lings, sail over the heads of their assailants, uttering the 

 most discordant cries. 



This celebrated cavern is pierced in a vertical rock ; 

 its entrance measures eighty feet in width, and seventy- 

 two in height, while through its gloomy labyrinths there 

 runs, far removed from the light of day, a subterranean 

 torrent. For a* distance of upwards of four himdred feet 

 the daylight still struggles with the darkness, and the 

 seeds brought in by the birds to feed their young, but 

 accidentally dropped by the way, germmate in the scanty 

 soil of the floor, producing etiolated shoots, which might 

 be taken for the phantoms of plants banished from the 

 outer world. Fin-ther in, the loud and discordant cries 

 of the Guacharos are heard, repeated and increased by 

 the echoes on every side. The seeds found in the crops 

 of the young birds are supposed by the Indians to ]wssess 

 medicinal virtues, and are carefully preserved under the 

 name of Semilla del Guachai'O. 



* (TTtaTiov, steation, /at ; ojjviq, ornis, a bird; Fat-bird. 



