348 ANIMALS OF NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EGA. Cuap. XII 
June, some individuals earlier, others later. This season of enforced 
quiet being passed, they make their appearance suddenly in the dry 
forest, near Ega, in large flocks, probably assemblages of birds gathered 
together from the neighbouring Ygapé forests, which are then flooded 
and cold. The birds have now become exceedingly tame, and the 
troops travel with heavy laborious flight from bough to bough amongst 
the lower trees. ‘They thus become an easy prey to hunters, and every 
one at Ega, who can get a gun of any sort and a few charges of powder 
and shot, or a blow-pipe, goes daily to the woods to kill a few brace for 
dinner ; for, as already observed, the people of Ega live almost ex- 
clusively on stewed and roasted Toucans during the months of Juneand 
July. The birds are then very fat, and the meat exceedingly sweet and 
tender. I did not meet with Cuvier’s Toucan on the Lower Amazons ; 
in that region, the sulphur and white-breasted Toucan (Ramphastos 
Vitellinus) seems to take its place ; this latter species, on the other hand, 
being quite unknown on the Upper Amazons. It is probable they are 
local modifications of one and the same stock. 
No one on seeing a Toucan can help asking what is the use of the 
enormous bill, which, in some species, attains a length of seven inches, 
and a width of more than two inches. A few remarks on this subject 
may be here introduced. The early naturalists having seen only the 
bill of a Toucan, which was esteemed as a marvellous production by 
the wirtuost of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concluded that 
the bird must have belonged to the aquatic and web-footed order, as 
this contains so many species of remarkable development of beak, 
adapted for seizing fish. Some travellers also related fabulous stories 
of Toucans resorting to the banks of rivers to feed on fish, and these 
accounts also encouraged the erroneous views of the habits of the birds, 
which for a long time prevailed. Toucans, however, are now well 
known to be eminently arboreal birds, and to belong to a group 
(including trogons, parrots, and barbets*), all of whose members are 
fruit-eaters. On the Amazons, where these birds are very common, no 
one pretends ever to have seen a Toucan walking on the ground in its 
natural state, much less acting the part of a swimming or wading bird. 
Professor Owen found, on dissection, that the gizzard in Toucans is not 
so well adapted for the trituration of food as it is in other vegetable 
feeders, and concluded, therefore, as Broderip had observed the habit 
of chewing the cud in a tame bird, that the great toothed bill was useful 
in holding and re-masticating the food. The bill can scarcely be said to 
be a very good contrivance for seizing and crushing small birds, or taking 
them from their nests in crevices of trees, habits which have been 
imputed to Toucans by some writers. The hollow, cellular structure of 
the interior of the bill, its curved and clumsy shape, and the deficiency 
of force and precision when it is used to seize objects, suggest a want of 
fitness, if this be the function of the member. But fruit is undoubtedly 
the chief food of Toucans, and it is in reference to their mode of 
obtaining it that the use of their uncouth bills is to be sought. , 
Flowers and fruit on the crowns of the large trees of South American 
forests grow, principally, towards the end of slender twigs, which will 
* Capitoninz, G. R. Gray. 
