Notes and Observations on a Guan. 291 



with which the Guan (Ortalis vetida) greets the sun in the 

 morning and bids farewell to it in the evening, is as 

 follows : — 



Catairh-katter-ker-rah ; Catan-h-katter-ker-rah, quickly- 

 repeated half a dozen times in a sort of gobbling chorus. 

 The cries are very resonating, as may be easily understood 

 by anyone who takes the trouble to merely pluck the breast 

 of a male bird and expose the then easily visible trachea, 

 which is bent in a long loop upon itself and lies for a great 

 part of its length outside the thorax and immediately beneath 

 the superficial fascia of the pectoral region. 



Conformably with its arboreal mode of life, the food of 

 the Guan appears to be chiefly confined to the leaves 

 of cei'tain trees and bushes. What particular species are 

 preferred I am unable to say ; but in southern Mexico I 

 once shot a bird out of a flock of some half dozen or so, 

 which I had observed in a tall bush with rather vivid shiny 

 and glossy leaves. The stomach of this bird was packed 

 tight with an almost dry mass of the finely divided leaves of 

 the bush in which the bird had been shot. They had an 

 appearance as if they had been chopped up with some sort 

 of machine. The fruit and seeds of trees and bushes ai-e 

 also said to be eaten. 



These pronounced arboreal habits, taken in conjunction 

 with the skeletal features which distinguish the Cracidae 

 in general from the more modern game-birds, and the fact of 

 the great and extraordinary persistency which has charac^- 

 terized birds in general through immense periods of geological 

 time, make it difficult to believe that a bird which, we must 

 presume, started its career as a trecdweller, could then 

 adapt itself to an existence on the ground and then again 

 revert to a life in the trees. 



Rather, it seems to me more likely that the Guan long 

 ago arrived at a blind alley of evolution and has failed, and 

 will fail, to progress. It is simply marking time. It has 

 probably never been exposed to conditions which differ very 

 greatly from its present existing ones, and so there have 



SER. X. VOL. I. X 



