TRUMPETER 991 
the Red-tailed Tropic-bird, P. rubricauda or phenicurus, not only 
has a red bill, but the elongated and very attenuated rectrices are 
of a bright crimson-red, and when adult the whole body shews a 
deep roseate tinge. The young are beautifully barred above with 
black arrow-headed markings. This species has not been known 
to occur in the Atlantic, but is perhaps the most numerous in the 
Indian and Pacific Oceans, in which last great value used to be 
attached to its tail-feathers to be worked into ornaments. 
That the Tropic-birds form a distinct family, Phaethontide, of 
the STEGANOPODES was originally maintained by Brandt, and is 
now generally admitted, yet it cannot be denied that they differ a 
good deal from the other members of the group; indeed Prof. 
Mivart (Zool. Trans. x. p. 364) will hardly allow Fregata and 
Phaethon to be steganopodous at all; and one curious difference is 
shewn by the eggs of the latter, which are in appearance so wholly 
unlike those of the rest. The osteology of two species has 
been well described and illustrated by Prof. Milne-Edwards in 
M. Grandidier’s fine Ozseawa de Madagascar (pp. 701-704, pls. 
279-2814). 
TRUMPETER, or TRuMPET-BIRD, the literal rendering in 
1747, by the anonymous English translator of De la Condamine’s 
travels in South America (p. 87), of that writer’s ‘Oiseau 
trompette” (Mém. Acad. Sc. 745, p. 473), which he says was 
called ‘“ Trompetero” by the Spaniards of Maynas on the Upper 
Amazons, from the peculiar sound it utters. He added that it 
was the “ Agami” of the inhabitants of Para and Cayenne,! wherein 
he was not wholly accurate, since the birds are specifically distinct, 
though, as they are generically united, the statement may pass. 
But he was also wrong, as had been Barrere (France Equinoz. 
p. 132) in 1741, in identifying the ‘“Agami” with the “ Macu- 
cagua ” of Marcgrave, for that is a TINAMOU (p. 963) ; and both still 
more wrongly accounted for the origin of the peculiar sound just 
mentioned, whereby Barrere was soon after led (Orn. Spec. Nov. 
pp. 62, 63) to apply to the bird the generic and vulgar names of 
Psophia and “ Petteuse,” the former of which, being unfortunately 
adopted by Linnzus, has ever since been used, though in 1766 
and 1767 Pallas (Miscell. p. 67, and Spicileg. iv. p. 6), and in 
1768 Vosmer (Descr. du Trompette Américain, p. 5), shewed that 
the notion it conveys is erroneous. Among English writers the 
name “‘ Trumpeter ” was carried on by Pennant, Latham, and others 
so as to be generally accepted, though an author may occasionally 
be found willing to resort to the native ‘“ Agami,” which is that 
almost always used by the French. 
1 Not to be confounded with the ‘‘ Héron Agami” of Buffon (Ois. vii. p. 382), 
which is the Ardea agami of other writers. 
