Chap. V. LONG BILLS OF TOUCANS. 339 



the banks of rivers to feed on fish, and these accounts 

 also encouraged the erroneous views of the habits of 

 the birds, which, for a long time, prevailed. Toucans, 

 however, are now well known to be eminently arboreal 

 birds, and to belong to a group (including trogons, par- 

 rots, and barbets*), all of whose members are fruit- 

 eaters. On the Amazons, where these birds are very 

 common, no one pretends ever to have seen a Toucan 

 walking on the ground in its natural state, much less 

 acting the part of a swimming or wading bird. Pro- 

 fessor Owen found, on dissection, that the gizzard in 

 Toucans is not so well adapted for the trituration of 

 food as it is in other vegetable feeders, and concluded, 

 therefore, as Broderip had observed the habit of chew- 

 ing the cud in a tame bird, that the great toothed bill 

 was useful in holding and re-masticating the food. The 

 bill can scarcely be said to be a very good contrivance 

 for seizing and crushing small birds, or taking them 

 from their nests in crevices of trees, habits which have 

 been imputed to Toucans by some writers. The 

 hollow, cellular structure of the interior of the bill, its 

 curved and clumsy shape, and the deficiency of force 

 and precision when it is used to seize objects, suggest 

 a want of fitness, if this be the function of the member. 

 But fruit is undoubtedly the chief food of Toucans, and 

 it is in reference to their mode of obtaining it that the 

 use of their uncouth bills is to be sought. 



Flowers and fruits on the crowns of the large trees of 

 South American forests grow, principally, towards the 

 end of slender twigs, which will not bear any con- 



* CapitoniriPe, O. E. Cray. 



z2 



