118 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



the mouths of almost the whole of animated nature, the Campanero still cheers the forest. You 

 may hear his toll and then pause for a minute, then another toll and then a pause again, and then a 

 toll and again a pause ; then he is silent for six or eight minutes and then another toll, and so on. 

 Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would 

 drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel, and so romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white 

 Campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other Cotingas, nor is it known in what part of Guiana 

 he makes his nest." 



With regard to the spiral tube on the forehead, or caruncle, Mr. Salvin remarks * : " From dried 

 specimens it is impossible to make any satisfactory dissection of the caruncles, to ascertain whether or 

 not any communication exists through means of which air could be passed so as to inflate them and 



cause them to become rigid. On opening the caruncle of an immature male, I found that fine fibrous 

 tissues adhered to the enclosing skin. This would shw that in life the caruncle is not hollow, and 

 that, if the internal structure is cellular and capable of inflation by air, these tissues would prevent 

 the outer skin from swelling and taking a bladder-like form. If inflation actually is produced, as 

 analogy with the Cayenne-bird, as described by Mr. Waterton, would certainly suggest, it still remains 

 to be seen from what source the air pressure is derived. The question, too, arises, Is the inflating 

 apparatus, if I may so call it, the growth of the maturing male, as are the caruncles themselves ? My 

 own impression is that no inflation takes place, and that the bird possesses little or no voluntary 

 muscular control over these excrescences, but that contraction or elongation takes place, as in the 

 fleshy protuberance over the bill of the common Turkey. The same appears to be the case with the 

 several members of the genus Cephalopterus (Umbrella-birds), one species of which is said to gather 

 its throat-lappet under its throat in a bunch like a rose. A muscular contraction would cause one of 

 these caruncles to become more rigid, as in the familiar case above cited." 



* "Ibis," 1865, p. 93. 



