108 THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS 



It dropped it at once, with an air of comic disappointment, 

 when it found that the stick was not edible. 



There were many strange birds round about. Toucans 

 were not uncommon. I have never seen any other bird 

 take such grotesque and comic attitudes as the toucan. 

 This day I saw one standing in the top of a tree with the 

 big bill pointing straight into the air and the tail also 

 cocked perpendicularly. The toucan is a born comedian. 

 On the river and in the ponds we saw the finfoot, a bird 

 with feet like a grebe and bill and tail like those of a darter, 

 but, like so many South American birds, with no close affil- 

 iations among other species. The exceedingly rich bird 

 fauna of South America contains many species which seem 

 to be survivals from a very remote geologic past, whose 

 kinsfolk have perished under the changed conditions of 

 recent ages; and in the case of many, like the hoatzin and 

 screamer, their like is not known elsewhere. Herons of 

 many species swarmed in this neighborhood. The hand- 

 somest was the richly colored tiger bittern. Two other 

 species were so unlike ordinary herons that I did not recog- 

 nize them as herons at all until Cherrie told me what they 

 were. One had a dark body, a white-speckled or ocellated 

 neck, and a bill almost like that of an ibis. The other 

 looked white, but was really mauve-colored, with black 

 on the head. When perched on a tree it stood like an ibis; 

 and instead of the measured wing-beats characteristic of 

 a heron's flight, it flew with a quick, vigorous flapping of 

 the wings. There were queer mammals, too, as well as 

 birds. In the fields Miller trapped mice of a kind entirely 

 new. 



Next morning the sky was leaden, and a drenching 



