CLUCKING-HEN. 361 



sent to him in July 1842, he remarks, "Having 

 opened the craw for the purpose of ascertaining 

 the food it had been eating, I found nothing but a 

 quantity of a dark pulverulent substance, very much 

 resembling decayed wood ; a substance which a bird 

 with such a bill as the Clucking-hen has, might be 

 supposed to pick up with the worms it might find in 

 the decaying wood. There was no trace of any animal 

 body, neither wings of beetles, nor vertebrae of 

 lizards." It may be added that this specimen when 

 discovered, " flew from where a limb of rotten 

 log-wood had been broken off; perhaps it was 

 eating some of the large wood-worms." 



Mr. Ey ton's bird was sent from Honduras : if 

 it had been a Jamaican specimen, I should have 

 guessed that the zoophyte which seemed to resemble 

 a sea-anemone, was a large species of Vaginulus 

 common in the mountains. 



From the general, though not total, absence 

 of the shells of the snails which I have found, I 

 judge that the shell is crushed with the beak, 

 and shaken off before the snail is swallowed. The 

 opercula, which are frequently found attached, have 

 enabled me to recognise the genera Ampullaria^ 

 Cyclostoma, and Helicina ; the latter two, terrestrial 

 snails. 



The piercing cries with which the Clucking-hen 

 salutes the approach of night, are little heard at 

 any other time : during the day it more commonly 

 emits the deliberate clucking above mentioned, as 

 it saunters hither and thither in the mountain- 

 woods, or among the cocoes of the provision-grounds. 



R 



