30 BEEF-EATER—BE&LL-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 Dicrocercus has the tail 
deeply forked, and in Melittophagus and Nyctiornis 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, JJerops ornatus, occurs over almost the 
whole of Australia. 
The Meropide have much in common with the Coraciidx 
(ROLLER), Alcedinide (KINGFISHER), Momotide (Mormot), and 
especially with the Galbulidy (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 i in society. 
want, Gen. B.p-4 ‘on 
BEEF- EATER, see OX-PECKER. 
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 Cotingide (CHATTERER), of which 
Waterton wrote (/Vanderings, 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 
1 Tn the allied species from Costa Rica, C. tricarwneulatus—so called from its 
three elongated appendages, which in appearance call to mind the long pendants 
of an orchid (Cypripedium caudatum)—Mr. Salvin records his impression (Zbis, 
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 
