HINTS TO ORNITHOLOGISTS. 993 
enabled to point out those birds which are supposed 
to be pre-eminently gifted with the powers of 
perching and of grasping; and should these our 
masters recommend that this novel study be ap- 
plied to quadrupeds, and to bipeds, as well as to 
birds; I respectfully beg leave to inform them 
that I have been gifted by Nature with vast powers 
of leg and toe: I can spread all my five toes; and, 
when I am barefoot in the forest, I can make use 
of them in picking up sundry small articles from 
the ground. Having an uncommon liking for high 
situations, I often mount to the top of a lofty tree, 
there to enjoy the surrounding scenery: nor can I 
be persuaded that I risk “life and limb ” in gaining 
the elevated situation. These, no doubt, are quali- 
ties and propensities aberrant from the true human 
type; and, according to the new theory, will at 
once account for my inordinate love of arboreal 
celsitude. 
There is a bird in Guiana named Kamichi. We 
call it the horned screamer. On its head grows a 
long, slender, and blunt kind of horn; if horn it 
can be called. We are informed, in a late publica- 
tion, that the bird uses this horn as a means of self- 
defence against its enemies. 
La Mancha’s knight, in his wildest mood for pike 
and helmet, never hit upon any thing so extrava- 
gant as this. No bird ever makes use of the crown 
of its head, or of anything that grows thereon, as a 
means of self-defence. Even if the horn on the 
head of the Kamichi were of a texture sufficiently 
strong to form a weapon of defence, still this bird 
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