136 AVES. 



their carriage and habits approximate them to the Crows, and their feet to the 

 Bee-eaters and the Kingfishers. The shape of these excrescences on the beak 

 varies with age, and in the very young bird they are not even visible; the 

 interior is generally cellular. They live on all sorts of food, eat soft fruits, 

 hunt mice, small birds, reptiles, and do not even despise carrion. 



ORDER III. 



SCANSORIjE. 



THIS order is composed of those birds whose external toe is directed back- 

 wards like the thumb, by which conformation they are the better enabled to 

 support the weight of their bodies, and of which certain genera take advantage 

 in clinging to and climbing upon trees. It is from this that they have 

 received the common name of climbing birds, which in strictness is not appli- 

 cable to all of them, as there are many true climbers which by the disposition 

 of their toes cannot belong to this order, instances of which we have already 

 seen in the creeper and nuthatch. 



The Scansorise usually nestle in the hollows of old trees ; their powers of 

 flight are middling ; their food, like that of the Passerinae, consists of insects 

 or fruit, in proportion as their beak is more or less stout ; some of them, the 

 woodpeckers for instance, have peculiar means for obtaining it. 



GALBULA Brisson. 



The Jacamars are closely allied to the kingfishers by their elongated sharp- 

 pointed beak, the upper ridge of which is angular, and 

 by their short feet, the anterior toes of which are almost 

 wholly united ; these toes, however, are not precisely the 

 same as those of the kingfishers ; their plumage moreover is not so smooth, and 

 always has a metallic lustre. They are solitary birds, that live in wet forests, 

 feed on iitsects, and build on low branches. 



The American species have a longer and perfectly straight beak. 



Prcus, Linnceus. 



The Woodfjeckers are weU characterised by their long, straight, angular beak, 

 the end of which is compressed into a wedge, and fitted 

 for splitting the bark of trees ; by their slender tongue, 

 armed near the tip with spines that curve backwards, 

 which by the action of the elastic horns of the hyoid 

 bone can be thrust far out of the beak, and by their 

 tail, composed of ten quills with stiff and elastic 

 stems, which acts as a prop in supporting them while 

 they are climbing. They are climbers jar excellence ; 

 they wander over trees in every direction, striking the 



