362 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



in his native haunts must be in the forest at the morning's dawn. The Houtou shuns the society of 

 man ; the plantations and cultivated parts are too much disturbed to engage it to settle there. The 



thick and gloomy forests are the places pre- 

 ferred by the solitary Houtou. In those 

 far-extending wilds, about day-break, you 

 hear him articulate, in a distinct and mourn- 

 ful tone, ' Houtou, houtou.' Move cautiously 

 on to where the sound proceeds from, and 

 you will see him sitting in. the underwood, 

 about a couple of yards from the ground, his 

 tail moving up and down every time he 

 articulates ' houtou.' He lives on insects and 

 the berries among the underwood ; and very 

 rarely is seen in the lofty trees, except the 

 bastard Siloabali-tree, the fruit of which is 

 grateful to him. He makes no nest, but rears 

 his young in a hole in the sand, generally on 

 the side of a hill." 



In confirmation of Mr. Waterton's 

 remarks, a paper was published by Mr. Osbert 

 Salvin in the " Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society " for 1873 (p. 429) : " Some years 

 ago (1860) this Society possessed a specimen 

 of Momotus subryfescens, which lived in one 

 of the large cages of the parrot-house all by 

 itself. I have a very distinct recollection of 

 the bii'd ; for I used every time I saw it to 

 cheer it up a bit by whistling such of its notes 

 as I had picked up in the forests of America. 

 The bird always seemed to appreciate this 

 attention ; for though it never replied, it 

 became at once animated, hopped about the 

 cage, and swung its tail from side to side like 

 the pendulum of a clock. For a long time 

 its tail had perfect spatules ; but towards the 

 end of its life I noticed that the median 

 feathers were no longer trimmed with such 

 precision ; and on looking at its beak I noticed 

 that from some cause or other it did not close 

 properly, but gaped slightly at the tip, and 

 had thus become unfitted for removing the 

 vanes of the feathers. Since the subject has 

 been revived by Dr. Murie, it occurred to me 

 that Mr. Bartlett could hardly have failed 

 to watch this bird during its moults, and 

 whilst the tail-feathers were growing. I ac- 

 cordingly wrote to him, and received the 

 following reply : 



' DEAR SIR, During the several years 

 the Motmot lived here I had many oppor- 



MUTMIJT. , . 



tunities of watching its habits ; and / have 



seen the bird in the act of picking off the webs of the central featJters of its tail, and have taken 

 from the bottom of the cage the fragments of web that fell from the bird's bill. As the bird 



