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18 BIRD GALLERY. 
Unlike the other members, this bird makes no mound, but lays its eggs, 
which are deposited at intervals of ten or twelve days, in holes in the 
sand on the sea-beach just above high-water mark. The birds visit 
the shore in pairs. Several females deposit their eggs in the same 
hole, and having covered them with sand return to the forest and take 
no further notice of them. 
Family Il. Cracipm. Curassows anp Guans. 
The Curassows and Guans are distinguished from the Megapodes 
by having a tufted oil-gland, and differ entirely in their breeding- 
habits. The eggs, which are white and usually two in number, are 
laid in a nest made either in atree or on the ground, and are incubated 
in the usual manner. The young when hatched are covered with down. 
Nearly sixty species are known, all inhabitants of the forest-regions 
of Central and South America, where they seem to take the place of the 
larger Game-Birds of the Old World. 
They may be grouped into three subfamilies :—A. With the upper 
mandible higher than broad (1. Cracine). B. With the mandible 
broader than high and with the top of the head mostly naked, and 
having an eleyated cylindrical, occipital helmet (2. Oreophasine), or, 
with the top of the head feathered and without a helmet (3. Pene- 
loping). 
The true Curassows have the feathers on the top of the head 
semierect and curled at the extremity, and are represented by Crav 
alector (44), a native of the northern parts of South America. Some of 
the allied species differ in having a swollen knob at the base of the 
upper mandible and wattles at the base of the lower. ‘They are readily 
domesticated in their native country and valued as food. 
One of the most remarkable is Lord Derby’s Mountain-Pheasant 
(Oreophasis derbianus) (46), with its curious helmeted head, the sole 
representative of its subfamily. This species is only found in 
Guatemala, and is apparently restricted to the higher forests of the 
Volean de Fuego. Like the Currasows and Guans, it feeds on fruits 
in the higher branches of the forest-trees during the early moruing, 
and as day advances descends to the underwood, where it spends its 
time basking or scratching among the leaves. 
The Guans and Penelopes form the last subfamily, which meludes 
six genera and contains the majority of the species. Of the Penelopes 
(Penelope) (41-51), five species are exhibited, and may be recognised by 
their naked chin and throat with a median wattle. The Black Penelope 
(Penelopina nigra) (62), from the highlands of Guatemala, is the sole 
representative of the second genus, in which the sexes differ in plumage, 
