TUBINARES 993 
taller bird. The head and neck are clothed with short velvety 
feathers ; the whole plumage is black, except that on the lower 
front of the neck the feathers are tipped with golden green, chang- 
ing according to the light into violet, and that a patch of dull 
rusty-brown extends across the middle of the back and wing- 
coverts, passing into ash-colour lower down, where they hang over 
and conceal the tail. The legs are bright pea-green. The habits 
of this bird are very wonderful, and it is much to be wished that 
fuller accounts of them had appeared. The curious sound it utters, 
noticed by the earliest observers, has been already mentioned, and 
by them also was its singularly social disposition towards man 
described ; but the information supplied to Buffon (Otis. iv. pp. 
496-501) by Manoncour and De la Borde, which has been repeated 
in many works, is still the best we have of the curious way in 
which it becomes semi-domesticated by the Indians and colonists 
and shews strong affection for its owners as well as for their living 
property—poultry or sheep—though in this reclaimed condition 
it seems never to breed.t Indeed nothing can be positively 
asserted as to its mode of nidification ; but its eggs, according to 
Mr. E. Bartlett, are of a creamy-white, rather round and about 
the size of Bantams’. Waterton in his Wanderings (Second 
Journey, chap. iii.) speaks of falling in with flocks of 200 or 300 
““Waracabas,” as he called them, in Demerara, but added nothing 
to our knowledge of the species; while the contributions of Trail 
(Mem. Wern. Soc. v. pp. 523-532) and Dr. Hancock (Mag. Nat. 
Hist. ser. 2, 11. pp. 490-492) as regards its habits only touch upon 
them in captivity. 
To the Trumpeters must undoubtedly be accorded the rank of 
a distinct Family, Psophiide; but like so many other South- 
American birds they seem to be the less specialized descendants of 
an ancient generalized group—perhaps the common ancestors of 
the Rallidx and Gruidx—and they therefore rightly come into Prof. 
Huxley’s GERANoMORPH. The structure of the syrinx is stated 
by Trail (ut supra) to be unique; but Mr. Beddard says that no 
trenchant characters distinguish it from many Rails and Cranes, 
nor kas he found any such modification of the trachea as is 
described by Trail (ué supra) to exist in some but not all males 
(Proc. Zool. Soc. 1890, pp. 329-341). 
TUBINARES, Illiger’s name in 1811 (Prodr. p. 273) for the 
group containing the ALBATROSES and PETRELS, for a long while 
1 In connexion herewith may be mentioned the singular story, received by 
Montagu (Orn. Dict. Suppl. Art. ‘‘Grosbeak, White-winged”’), from the then 
Lord Stanley, of one of these birds, which, having apparently escaped from con- 
finement, formed the habit of attending a poultry-yard. On the occasion of a 
pack of hounds running through the yard, the Trumpeter joined and kept up 
with them for nearly three miles ! 
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