196 



GALLIFORMES 



CHAP. 



readily domesticated, but rarely breed in confinement. Hybrids 

 with domestic fowls have been recorded. Except where men- 

 tioned below the sexes are alike. 



Sub-fam. 1. Cracinae. Crax alector is black with a purplish 

 gloss, the belly being white, the naked lores and orbits black, the 

 cere and base of the bill yellow, the tip bluish, and the feet horn- 

 coloured. Throughout the whole genus, which is Central and South 

 American, the female has a curly crest barred with white. The re- 

 maining nine species differ in being greenish-black, and except 

 C. fasciolata have a frontal knob, with or without a basal wattle 



Fig. 45. Crested Curassow. Crax alector. 



on each side of the mandible, the colour of these parts varying from 

 scarlet or yellow to pale blue or purplish-black. The tail may be 

 tipped with white ; the females often exhibit white barring above, 

 and have the plumage relieved by buff and chestnut. Mthocrax 

 urumutmn, ranging from British Guiana to the tapper Amazons, 

 is chiefly chestnut above vermiculated with black, and cinnamon 

 below ; the wings and tail being blackish with buff markings, the 

 throat chestnut, the long crest black, the naked lores and orbits 

 yellow and purplish, the bill scarlet, the feet flesh-coloured. The 

 female has the lower parts mottled with dusky. Ifitua mitic of 

 British Guiana, Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia is blue-black, with chestnut 



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