THE MUSEUM. 



25 



muscles pulsated with the rhythmic 

 regularity of the heart. Further ex- 

 periments convinced the corps of in- 

 vestigators laboring under Professor 

 Whitman that only the presence of 

 potassium and calcium in the blood 

 prevented the whole structure of stri- 

 ated muscled from contracting and ex- 

 panding as regularly as the heart does. 

 That this applies equally well to man- 

 kind, and that only the presence of 

 restraining influence in the blood pre- 

 vents the pulsation of the muscles of 

 the body, is accepted as a natural de- 

 duction by many scientists. 



Step by step the scientists of Wood's 

 Holl are learing from the marine ani- 

 mals causes of the phenomena in the 

 bodies of mankind. The least eager 

 and least prophetically inclined hardly 

 dares express what he believes will be 

 the outcome of their investigations. 

 That it will revolutionize theories of 

 life held even by eminent students of 

 natural science up to the present day 

 they do not hesitate to affirm. Be- 

 yond they will noi go further than to 

 declare that when the chemical theory 

 of life is definately formulated, as they 

 believe it soon will be, it will startle 

 the world as it has not been startled 

 since Darwin made public his theory 

 of natural evolution. — From the Chi- 

 cago Sunday Tribune. 



Strange Birds and Their Habits- 



Probably every stamp collector 

 who has seen the Guatemalan 

 stamp has noticed the beauti- 

 ful and graceful bird whose por- 

 trait adorns them, says A. Hyatt 

 Verrill, in December Popular Science. 

 This bird, the Quetzal or Resplendent 

 Trogan. is found only in the heavy 

 mountain forests of Mexico and Cen- 

 tral America, and would have been far 

 more appropriate as the national em- 

 blem of Mexico than of Guatemala , for 

 when Cortez first visited the land of 

 the Montezumas, he found the kings 

 and high priests wearing robes and 



head dresses composed of the brilliant 

 feathers of the sacred Quetzal. 



The male bird is a bright irridescent 

 golden green above, and vivid scarlet 

 below, with a graceful soft green crest, 

 and curved green feathers hanging over 

 the wings, while two or three of the 

 ferny green tail-coverts extend far be- 

 yond the black and white tail, often 

 extending a yard or more in length. 

 The female is much more modestly 

 dressed, hardly a trace of the scarlet 

 appearing on her dull gray breast, 

 while the tail-coverts are scarcely lon- 

 ger than the real tail. 



Like nearly all the members of the 

 Trogon family, the Quetzal lays its 

 eggs in holes in trees, and the male 

 bird does his share of the sitting. Un- 

 less the hole were very large this would 

 be impossible without injury to the 

 ornamental tail coverts, of which these 

 birds are very proud. To overcome 

 this difficulty the Quetzal resorts to the 

 simple but ingenious plan of digging 

 the hole entirely through the trunk of 

 the tree. Thus when sitting on the 

 nest the tail projects outside, and the 

 bird can enter and leave the nest with- 

 out the necessity of turning about. 



In the same forest with the Quetzal 

 may be found a cousin of his, a hand- 

 some fellow with burnished steel-blue 

 back and pale yellow breast, who has 

 a still more unique manner of nesting. 

 One day while walking through the 

 woods of Costa Rica, I noticed one of 

 these Trogons perched motionless on a 

 branch near a large hornets' nest. 

 While watching him, he suddenly dart- 

 ed forward, snapped up a hornet, and 

 disappeared. Puzzled at the way in 

 which he vanished, I carefully scrutin- 

 ized the limb, expecting to find him 

 hidden among the leaves. Presently, 

 to my great surprise, he emerged from 

 the opening in the hornets' nest As 

 these tropical hornets are unusually 

 large and lively, I did not attempt 

 further investigation at that time, but 

 discovered later, that these Trogons 

 always make their nests within the 

 home of the hornets, and adding in- 



