988 TROGON 
and when this is the case they are usually barred ladder-like with 
white and black.t According to Gould, they are larger and more 
pointed in the young than in the old, and grow squarer and have 
the white bands narrower at each succeeding moult. He also 
asserts that in the species which have the wing-coverts freckled, 
the freckling becomes finer with age. So far as has been observed, 
the nidification of these birds is in holes of trees, wherein are laid 
without any bedding two roundish eggs, generally white, but cer- 
tainly in one species (Quezal) tinted with bluish-green. 
The Trogons form a very well-marked Family, belonging to the 
multifarious group here treated as PICARL# ; but, instead of being 
(so far as is known) lke all the rest of them and, as Prof. Huxley 
believed, “desmognathous,” they have been shewn by W. A. 
Forbes (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1881, p. 836) to be “schizognathous ”— 
thus demonstrating, in the words of the latter, “that the structure 
of the palate has not that unique and peculiar significance that 
has been claimed for it in the classification of birds.” Perhaps the 
explanation of this anomaly may lie in the fact that the Trogons 
are a very old form. The remains of one, 7’. gallicus, have been 
recognized by Prof. A. Milne-Edwards (Ois. foss. de la France, ii. p. 
395, pl. 177, figs. 18-22) from the Miocene of the Allier, and it 
may not be too much to suppose that the schizognathous structure 
was more ancient than the desmognathous (cf. supra, p. 878, note). 
Again too this fortunate discovery seems to account for the re- 
markable distribution of the Trogons at the present day. While 
they chiefly abound, and have developed their climax of magnifi- 
cence, in the tropical parts’ of the New World, they yet occur in 
the tropical parts of the Old. The species now inhabiting Africa, 
forming the group Hapaloderma, are clearly allied to those of the 
Neotropical Zrogon, and the difference between the Asiatic forms, if 
somewhat greater, is still comparatively slight. It is plain then 
that the Trogons are an exceptionally persistent type; indeed in 
the whole Class few similar instances occur and perhaps none that 
can be called parallel. The extreme development of the type in 
the New World just noticed also furnishes another hint. While 
in some of the American Trogons (Pharomacrus, for instance) the 
plumage of the females is not very much less beautiful than that 
of the males, there are others in which the hen-birds retain what 
may be fairly deemed a more ancient livery, while the cocks flaunt 
in brilliant attire. . Now the plumage of both sexes in all but two 
of the Asiatic Trogons resembles rather that of the young and of those 
females of the American species which are modestly clothed. The 
inference from this fact would seem to be that the general colora- 
1 In the Trogon of Cuba, Prionotelus, they are most curiously scooped out, 
as it were, at the extremity, and the lateral pointed ends diverge in a way 
almost unique among birds. 
