THE BARBETS. 



341 



BILL OF TOCCAX. 



mouthful be larger than the orifice of the gullet, the Toucan abandons it without seeking to 

 divide it." 



Mr. Bates, in his " Naturalist on the River Amazon," makes some further allusions to the 

 Toucans and their bill, which will be found well worth the reading. He also gives the following 

 history of a tame bird (Vol. ii., p. 341) : 

 " One day, whilst walking along the prin- 

 cipal pathway in the woods near Ega, I 



saw one of these Toucans seated gravely on 

 a low branch close to the road, and had no 

 difficulty in seizing it with my hand. It 

 turned out to be a runaway pet bird; no one, 

 however, came to own it, although I kept it 

 in my house for several months. The bird 

 was in a half-starved and sickly condition, 

 but after a few days of good living it re- 

 covered health and spirits, and became one 

 of the most amusing pets imaginable. Many 

 excellent accounts of the habits of tame 



Toucans have been published, and therefore I need not describe them in detail ; but I do not recollect 

 to have seen any notice of their intelligence and confiding disposition under domestication, in which 

 qualities my pet seemed to be almost equal to Parrots. I allowed Tocaiio to go free about the house, 

 contrary to my usual practice with pet animals. He never, however, mounted my working-table 

 after a smart correction, which he received the first time he did so. He used to sleep on the top of 

 a box in a corner of the room, in. the usual position of these birds namely, with the long tail laid 

 right over on the back and the beak thrust underneath the wing. He ate of everything that we eat 

 (beef, turtle, fish, farina, fruit), and was a constant attendant at our table a cloth spread on a mat. 

 His appetite was most ravenous, and his powers of digestion quite wonderful. He got to know the 

 meal-hours to a nicety, and we found it very difficult, after the first week or two, to keep him away 

 from the dining-room, where he had become very impudent and troublesome. We tried to shut him 

 out by enclosing him in the back yard, which was separated by a high fence from the street on which 

 our front door opened ; but he used to climb the fence and hop round by a long circuit to the dining- 

 room, making his appearance with the greatest punctuality as the meal was placed on the table. He 

 acquired the habit afterwards of rambling about the street near our house, and one day he was 

 stolen, so we gave him up for lost. But two days afterwai'ds he stepped through the open doorway 

 at dinner-hour, with his old gait, and sly, magpie-like expression, having escaped from the house 

 where he had been guarded by the person who had stolen him, which was situated at the farther end 

 of the village." 



THE SEVENTH FAMILY OF THE ZYGODACTYLE PICARIAN BIRDS. 

 THE BARBETS (Capitonidee)* 



These are climbing birds of somewhat brilliant coloration, distributed over the tropical portions 

 of both hemispheres, but absent in Europe, Northern Asia, Australia, and the Moluccas southwards 

 from the Sunda Islands. " Though strictly arboreal in their habits," write Messrs. Marshall, in their 

 exhaustive work on the family ,t " and living only in forest districts or open countries interspersed 

 with groves of trees, they are neither shy nor difficult to approach. When the districts in which 

 they are found happen to be at all thickly populated, the Barbets show no disposition to retreat to 

 more secluded quarters, but take up their abode in gardens, and frequently breed in trees close to the 

 houses. They usually keep to the tops of the trees, but may occasionally be seen creeping among the 

 branches of small bushes and underwood. Their food is fruit, seeds, buds, and occasionally insects ; 

 these latter are very seldom resorted to in Asia, more frequently in Africa, and with some American 

 species they form the staple food. They are not gregarious, though a great number may sometimes 



* From Capito, the principal genus : u proper name. 



t " A Monograph of the Capitonidte, or Scansorial Barbets," by C. H. T. Marshall and G. F. L. Marshall (1871). 

 138 



