844 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



blend harmoniously with the surrounding world of plants and 

 animals, and, taking a prominent part in the aspect of nature, 

 at once attract the attention of the stranger. 



In this respect, as in so many others, the warmer regions of 

 the globe have a great advantage over those of the temperate 

 and glacial zones, but nowhere do the feathered tribes find a 

 richer or wider field for their development than in the forests 

 and swamps of tropical America, where the vegetable world 

 revels in luxuriant growth, and myriads of insects, peopling the 

 woods, the waters and the fields, furnish each kind according to 

 its wants with an inexhaustible supply of food. The circum- 

 stance that man but thinly inhabits these wilds is another 

 reason which favours the multiplication of birds, for in Europe 

 also they would no doubt be far more numerous, if the farmer, 

 the sportsman, and so many other enemies were not continually 

 thinning their ranks. To these elements of destruction they 

 are far less exposed in tropical America, and being comparatively 

 but little disturbed, they reign, as it were, over the forest and 

 the field, over the mountain and the plain, over the river and 

 the lake. 



By their loud cry, resembling the yelping of a puppy-dog, and 

 the enormous disproportion of their bill, which might seem 

 rather adapted to a bird of ostrich-like dimensions than to one 

 not much larger than a crow, the Toucans make themselves 

 very conspicuous in the American woods. Were it of a strong 

 and solid texture, their huge beak would infallibly weigh them 

 to the ground ; but being of a light and cellular structure, and 

 in some places not thicker than writing paper, they carry it 

 easily, and leap with such agility from bough to bough, that it 

 does not then appear preposterously large. 



When flying, it gives them, indeed, a very awkward appear- 

 ance, as their body always seems overweighted by the enormous 

 beak, which makes the head bow downwards as the bird passes 

 through the air ; but the beauty of its colouring soon reconciles 

 the eye to its disproportionate size : for the brightest red, 

 variegated with black and yellow stripes on the upper mandible, 

 and a stripe of the liveliest sky-blue on the lower, contribute to 

 adorn the bill of the Bouradi, as one of the three Toucan 

 species of Gruiana is called by- the Indians. Unfortunately, 

 these brilliant tints fade after death, and even the art of a 



