398 



NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS. 



them violently against the 

 ground or perch. Songless, 

 their only cry is ' houtoo.' 

 They breed in holes, and about 

 May lay three or four dusky 

 cream-colored eggs. Sexes un- 

 distinguishable; and the young 

 scarcely differ, except in the 

 more downy texture of their 

 feathers. Primaries shed at 

 the first moult. The story has 

 found credence that they nil>- 

 ble off the occasionally absent 

 vanes of the long middle tail- 

 feathers; but this notion has 

 been contradicted." 



This sentence, which refers 

 to the racket-shaped tail-feath- 

 ers of certain species, as illus- 

 trated in its perfection by 

 the accompanying figure (Fig. 

 197.#), caused an article by 

 Mr. O. Salvin, in which he re- 

 produced a letter from Mr. A. 

 D. Bartlett in regard to a speci- 

 men of Momotus subrufescens, 

 which for several years lived in 

 the Zoological Society's Gar- 

 dens in London, to the effect 

 that he had seen the bird in 

 the act of picking off the webs 

 of the central feathers of its 

 tail, and had taken from the bot- 

 tom of the cage the fragments 

 of web that fell from the bird's 

 bill. Mr. Salvin, in addition, 

 furnished drawings of tail-feath- 

 ers from skins in his collection 

 illustrating the gradual progress 

 of denudation, from the newly 

 grown feathers with continuous 

 webs to the finished racket. 

 So far as his material goes it 

 seems to corroborate the theory 

 of the bird voluntarily and pur- 

 posely trimming the feather 

 down. But it will hardly ex- 

 which is represented in Fig. 197 6 T , taken from a specimen in the 



FIG. 198. Moinotus momota, uiotmot. 



plain the case 



