398 



N mi: UAL IIISTonY ol- ISIJIDS. 



plain 



tlicm violently against the 

 ground or jicrch. Songless, 

 tlifir only cry is ' houtoo.' 

 Tlifv liri'cil in holes, and about 

 May lay lliri'u or four tlusky 

 creain-colort'd eggs. Sexes un- 

 distinguishable ; and tlie young 

 scarcely dilYcr, exccjit in the 

 more downy texture of their 

 feathers. Primaries sljed at 

 the first moult. The story has 

 found credence that they nil)- 

 ble <off the occasionally absent 

 vanes of the long middle tail- 

 fe.athers; but this notion has 

 been contradicted.'' 



This sentence, Mhich refers 

 to the racket-shaped tail-feath- 

 ers of certain si)ecies, as illus- 

 trated in its perfection Ity 

 the accompanying figure (Fig. 

 107 Z>), caused an article by 

 Mr. O. Salvin, in which he re- 

 produced a letter from 3Ir. A. 

 I), liartlett in regard to a sjieci- 

 men of J/omoltis sitl/n/f'iiicoi.i, 

 which for several years lived in 

 the Zoological Society's Gar- 

 dens in London, to the effect 

 that he had seen the bird iu 

 the act of picking off tlie webs 

 of the central feathers of its 

 tail, and had taken from the bot- 

 tom of the cage the fragments 

 of web that fell from the bird's 

 bill. Mr. Salvin, in addition, 

 furnisheil drawings of tail-feath- 

 ors from skins in his collection 

 illustrating the gradual progress 

 of denudation, from the newly 

 grown feathers with continuous 

 webs to the finisheil racket. 

 So far as his material goes it 

 seems to corroborate the theory 

 of the bird voluntarily and pur- 

 posely trimming the feather 

 down. Hut it will hardly ex- 

 tbe case which is represented in Fig. 11(7 (', taken from a specimen in the 



Fio. 196. — Momolus momota, niotmot. 



