CUCKOOS. 209 



of their toes, we should not suspect they were so 

 intimately connected with the more typical groups 

 of the tribe as they undoubtedly are. They neither 

 use their bill for climbing, like the Parrots, nor 

 for making holes in trees, like the Woodpeckers ; 

 neither can they mount the perpendicular stems like 

 the Certhiadce or Creepers ; and yet they decidedly 

 climb, although in a manner peculiar to them- 

 selves. Having frequently seen different species 

 of the Brazilian Cuckoos in their native forests, I 

 may safely affirm that they climb in all other direc- 

 tions than that of the perpendicular. Their flight 

 is so feeble from the extreme shortness of their 

 wings, that it is evidently performed with difficulty, 

 and it is never exercised but to convey them from 

 one tree to another, and these flights in the thickly 

 wooded tracts of tropical America are of course 

 very short ; they alight upon the highest boughs, 

 and immediately begin to explore the horizontal 

 and slanting ramifications with the greatest assi- 

 duity, threading the most tangled mazes, and 

 leaving none unexamined, All soft insects in- 

 habiting such situations lying in their route be- 

 come their prey, and the quantities that are thus 

 destroyed must be very great. In passing from 

 one bough to another they simply hop, without 

 using their wings, and their motions are so quick, 

 that an unpractised observer, even if placed imme- 

 diately beneath the tree, would soon lose sight of 

 the bird. The Brazilian hunters give to their 

 Cuckoos the general name of Cafs-tail ; nor is 

 the epithet inappropriate, for their long hanging 

 tails, no less than their mode of climbing the 

 branches, give them some distant resemblance to 

 that quadruped. I have no doubt that the great 



