TROGONS. 43 



or yellow ; set off, especially on the broad and 

 lengthened tail, with variations of black and 

 white, in the most delicate and elaborate pen- 

 cillings. 



The Trogons have the toes set as in the climb- 

 ing birds, two before and two behind, yet they 

 have not the habit or power of climbing ; the feet 

 are short and feeble. The wings also are short, 

 but pointed ; the quill-feathers are rigid, but the 

 general plumage is very soft and plumose. The 

 beak is short, somewhat conical, robust ; the tip 

 and generally the edges are notched or toothed ; 

 the gape is wide. The general form is full and 

 plump, to which the dense and soft character 

 of the plumage contributes; the head is rather 

 large ; the tail is long and ample ; the feathers 

 are graduated, regularly decreasing in length out- 

 ward, and in one genus (Calurus) the tail-coverts 

 are enormously developed, so as to conceal the 

 tail, and depend in narrow flowing plumes of 

 great length. 



The food of the Trogons consists principally of 

 insects. "They seize," observes Mr. Gould, in 

 his splendid Monograph of this Family, " the 

 flitting insect on the wing, which their wide gape 

 enables them to do with facility; while their 

 feeble tarsi and feet are such as to qualify them 

 merely for resting on the branches as a post of 

 observation whence to mark their prey as it 

 passes, and to which, having given chase, to re- 

 turn. . . . Denizens of the intertropical regions 

 of the Old and New World, they shroud their 

 glories in the deep and gloomy recesses of the 

 forest, avoiding the light of day and the observa- 

 tion of man ; dazzled by the brightness of the 



