30 BEEF-EA TER— BELL-BIRD 



It is certainly one of the most beautifully-coloured birds ever 

 found in these islands, and no one who has once seen a specimen 

 will forget its rich chestnut crown and mantle passing lower down 

 into primrose, its white frontal band, the black patch extending 

 from the bill to the ear -coverts, the saffron throat bordered with 

 black, while most of the rest of the plumage is of a vivid greenish- 

 blue or bluish-green, and the middle pair of tail feathers are 

 elongated and attenuated in a way that is not seen in any other 

 British land-bird. This formation of the tail characterizes also the 

 single species of the genus Meropogon, while Bicrocercus has the tail 

 deeply forked, and in Melittophagus and Nijdiornis it is nearly even, 

 but the last, containing two species— one ranging from Burma to 

 Borneo, and the other (the largest of the whole Family) inhabiting 

 India as well as Burma and Cochin China — is readily distinguishable 

 by the remarkable elongated feathers of the gular tract. Six species 

 of the Family shew themselves in the Cape Colony or parts imme- 

 diately adjacent, and one, Merops ornatus, occurs over almost the 

 whole of Australia. 



The Meropidse have much in common with the Camciidse 

 (Roller), Alcedinidse (Kingfisher), Momotidse (Motmot), and 

 especially with the Galhulidx (Jacamar), for not only are there 

 many anatomical resemblances between the birds of these Families, 

 but nearly all of them, so far as is known — the Rollers perhaps 

 being the chief exceptions — breed in holes made by themselves in 

 a bank of earth, and the Bee-eaters, or at least the species of the 

 genus Merops, it would seem, nearly always in society. 



BEEF-EATER,^see Ox-pecker./ /ii.^w^-&~-/^.^/^ /;/5/ 



BELL-BIRD is the English name given in various parts of the 

 world to very different species ; but always from the resemblance 

 of the sound of the note they utter to that of a bell. In Guiana, 

 it is applied to the Campanero of the Spanish settlers, Chasmorhyn- 

 chus niveus, belonging to the Family Cotingidx (Chatterer), of which 

 Waterton wrote {Wanderings, 2nd Journey): "He is about the size 

 of the jay. His plumage is white as snow. On his forehead rises a 

 spiral tube nearly three inches long. It is jet black, dotted all over 

 with small white feathers. It has a communication with the palate, 

 and when filled with air, looks like a spire ; when empty it becomes 

 pendulous.^ His note is loud and clear, like the sound of a bell, 

 and may be heard at the distance of three miles. . . . You hear 



^ In the allied species from Costa Rica, C. tricarunculatus — so called from its 

 three elongated appendages, which in appearance call to mind the long pendants 

 of an orchid (Oypripedmvi caudatum) — Mr. Salvin records his impression (Ibis, 

 1865, p. 93) that "no inflation takes place, and that the bird possesses little or 

 no voluntary muscular control over these excrescences." The fact that the 

 Brazilian species, C nudicollis, utters a note which, if not actually " bell-like " in 



