24



Mr. R. I. Pocock,



yellow globular caruncle, whence the technical and trivial names

of the species are derived, but is also fairly uniformly black in

colour with the belly and vent white. The lieu, on the contrary,

which is but little inferior to the cock in size, has no excresence

and no yellow upon the base of the beak, and is totally differently

coloured. The feathers of the head and upper part of the neck

are black with white bars ; the lower part of the neck is black

and unbarred, and the black tint gradually fades into the brown

black mottled hue which pervades the rest of the body with the

exception of the breast and belly which are ruddy-buff.


In the compartment of the Eastern A.viary usually

occupied by these birds there has also been for some years a hen

example of another species of Cnrassow, which was named by

Reichenow Crax hecki, in honour of Dr. Heck, the distinguished

Director of the Zoological Gardens in Berlin. So far as the

colour of the plumage is concerned this is a very different looking

bird from the hens of the Globose Curassow. On the head and

neck the white predominates to such an extent that the feathers

may be described as white with black bars; while those of the

upper side of the body are mostly black and brown, barred with

white and buff, the lower side being wholly of the latter colour.


Yet in spite of the differences between the hen birds, there

is no doubt that the two species are nearly allied. Indeed the

presence or absence of bars on the feathers of hen Curassows

may be an uncertain and deceptive guide to affinity; for. as has

been recorded by Mr. Ogilvie-Grant, in the hens of Sclater’s

Curassow (Crax fcisciolata ), of which there is an example now

living in the Gardens, the white bars appear to decrease with age

whereas, according to Reichenow, they became more pronounced

during the two years that the typical example of Heck’s

Curassow lived in Berlin.


I do not know the meaning of the difference in colour

between hen Curassows with white - barred, and those with

uniformly darlc-toned plumage. But when one compares the

striped hens of Sclater’s and Heck’s Curassows with the un¬

striped dark liued specimens of the Globose and Yarrell’s

Curassows exhibited in the Gardens, the suspicion arises that the

differences must coincide with some differences of environment



