Notes on Out-of-the-Way Birds. 131 



roaches, and when grown allowed liberty about a garden. It i.s 

 an enemy to any small bird it can catch, and will eat lizards and 

 snakes. I had one loose which fed itself on toads and refuse 

 boiled rice ! This bird has been represented at the London Zoo, 

 and ought always to be on view. Another non-parasitic cuckoo, 

 the Guira or White Ani {^Gjiira guira) of South America, has 

 also been frequently imported, and has bred in this country, 

 lylke the Crow-pheasant, it is carnivorous. 



I was lately shown a fine specimen of our common cuckoo, 

 belonging to Mr. Harwood, the taxidermist, whose success as an 

 aviculturist in keeping this bird (and in a thrush cage till it has 

 come into full adult plumage), is as remarkable as his beautiful 

 taxidermic work. The bird, it is useful to know, has been ifid 

 almost entirely on hard-boiled egg and mealworms, though of 

 course, like most cuckoos, it greatly appreciates hairy caterpillars. 



Trogans have never fallen to my personal lot, but the first 

 one I ever knew to be kept in captivity since the time the ancient 

 Aztecs kept the Quezal {Phat ojuacnis Diochnio) for its feathers, 

 was a specimen of the Indian Red-headed Trogon {Harpacies 

 erylhrocephalus) which we had in the Calcutta Zoo in m}^ time. 

 This was fed entirely on grasshoppers and cockroaches, and kept 

 in a cage. I also recently saw again the first Trogon ever 

 brought to England, the Cuban Trogon (^Prionotehis tenimiriis) 

 which was imported by Mr. Frost in 1907, and had been in Mr. 

 Maxwell's hands. Other specimens have since been imported, 

 and the Zoo have owned one and had two (I believe a pair) on 

 deposit, but in neither case did the birds live a fourth as long as 

 Mr. Maxwell's. Private individuals' birds must be expected to 

 have an advantage in the fact that their owners have paid for 

 them themselves ; but the fact that no atttempt was made to 

 encourage the pair (?) exhibited to breed, or even to put them 

 in an outdoor flight, shows how little science is regarded at the 

 Zoo. The young stages of Trogons are almost unknown, and to 

 have elucidated them would have been to win some of that res- 

 pectful recognition from skin -ornithologists for which some of 

 our aviculturists are continually hankering, as if the study of 

 live birds were not infinitely the more scientific of the two, if 

 people needs must specialise ! 



