338 ANIMALS OF EGA. Chap. V. 



forest, near Ega, in large flocks, probably, assemblages 

 of birds gathered together from the neighbouring Ygapo 

 forests, which are then flooded and cold. The birds 

 have now become exceedingly tame, and the troops 

 travel with heavy laborious flight from bough to bough 

 amongst the lower trees. They thus become an easy 

 prey to hunters, and every one at Ega, who can get a 

 gun of any sort and a few charges of powder and shot, 

 or a blow-pipe, goes daily to the woods to kill a few 

 brace for dinner ; for, as already observed, the people of 

 Ega live almost exclusively on stewed and roasted 

 Toucans during the months of June and July. The 

 birds are then very fat, and the meat exceedingly sweet 

 and tender. I did not meet with Cuvier's Toucan on 

 the Lower Amazons ; in that region, the sulphur and 

 white-breasted Toucan (Ramphastos Vitellinus) seems to 

 take its place, this latter species, on the other hand, being 

 quite unknown on the Upper Amazons. It is probable 

 they are local modifications of one and the same stock. 



No one, on seeing a Toucan, can help asking what is 

 the use of the enormous bill, which, in some species, 

 attains a length of seven inches, and a width of more 

 than two inches. A few remarks on this subject may 

 be here introduced. The early naturalists, having seen 

 only the bill of a Toucan, which was esteemed as a 

 marvellous production by the virtuosi of the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries, concluded that the bird must 

 have belonged to the aquatic and web-footed order, 

 as this contains so many species of remarkable develop- 

 ment of beak, adapted for seizing fish. Some travellers 

 also related fabulous stories of Toucans resorting to 



