CHAPTER XII 



THE HOMES OF TOUCANS 



If toucans did not exist, an account of their character- 

 istics, of their form, their color and actions would be consid- 

 ered as the result of a disordered brain, or the wilful repre- 

 sentation of a cubist artist, worthy to be depicted as perching 

 on the same branch with a phoenix. But we must accept 

 them as living, breathing birds, whose vivid patterns and 

 penetrating voices announce their presence in abundance in 

 the Guiana jungle. Their legs are short and their arboreal 

 progression is by an absurd hopping; their long tails, fre- 

 quently in the daytime and always in sleep, are cocked at a 

 seemingly impossible angle over their back; their enormous 

 beaks should belong to birds four times the size of the own- 

 ers; while through the center of this beak extends a slim, 

 feather-like tongue, occupying the same relative space as 

 would an umbrella-rib in a balloon. All these and other less 

 obvious characters have made of toucans objects of acute 

 interest to ornithologists, and subjects of mirth and wonder 

 to laymen for the two hundred odd years since these birds 

 became fairly well known. 



The details of their first discovery are lost to us, but 

 we know that as early as 1599, the old Italian naturalist 

 Ulisse Aldrovandi had distinguished the toucan as Rham- 

 phastos, which means that he was thinking in Greek of its 

 curved beak. In the word toucan, we are speaking, more 

 happily, in the native tongue of South American Indians, 

 who knew these birds and used their plumage for decoration 

 long before Columbus shattered the barriers of their peace- 

 ful isolation. There is no doubt but that the skins of the 

 toco toucan were among the first birds to be sent to Eu- 

 rope after the discovery of America. 



