THE GAPERS. 1 35 



favourite retreats. Burmeister tells us that the two eggs that constitute a brood are deposited in any 

 slight cavity in the trees. Such as he obtained were oval in shape, with a lustreless, pure white shell, 

 thickly covered with brown dots of various shades, most thickly strewn over one end. 



THE GUACHERO, OR OIL BIRD. 



The Oil Bird (Steatornis Caripensis) has hitherto been classed among the Goatsuckers, but it 

 differs so essentially from any other member of that family in its mode of life, that we have decided 

 upon describing it entirely apart. The body of this remarkable species is slender, the head flat and. 

 broad ; the wing, in which the third and fourth quills exceed the rest in length, though long and 

 pointed, does not extend as far as the extremity of the well-developed tail. The beak is broad at its 

 base, compressed in the middle, and terminates in a hook ; its tip, moreover, is furnished with two 

 denticulations ; the gape extends to the eyes, but the lower mandible is feeble and considerably 

 shorter than the upper part of the beak. The feet are so small as to be almost useless upon the 

 ground : their soles are callous, and the tarsi without feathers ; the front toes are all of equal .size, 

 entirely unconnected, and the short hinder toe is reversible. The plumage is extremely soft, almost 

 silky, and the region of the beak is overgrown with long bristles ; the large eyes are protected by 

 heavy lids covered with long hairs. The gullet is not dilated into a crop, and the stomach is very 

 muscular ; the entrails are covered with a fatty layer of such thickness that they may be said to be 

 embedded in fat. The plumage is of a beautiful reddish brown, deepest in shade upon the back ; the 

 head, breast, belly, wings, and tail are rust-red, marked with heart-shaped white spots, which are here 

 and there surrounded by a black line. The eye is blueish black, the beak and feet hom-grey. The 

 length of this species is about twenty-one inches, and its breadth about forty-two inches. Humboldt, 

 who discovered this remarkable bird in 1799, found it living in the rocky caverns of Caripe, and more 

 recent travellers have met with it in the dark clefts and fissures of rocks among the Andes. 



" The Cueva del Guachero, or Cave of the Guacheros," as described by Humboldt, " is a vast 

 fissure, pierced in the vertical profile of a rock, facing towards the south ; and the rocks which 

 surmount the grotto are covered with trees of immense height ; succulent plants and orchidacea? rise 

 in the driest clefts, and plants waving in the wind hang in festoons at the entrance. Within the cave 

 vegetation continues to the distance of forty paces. Daylight penetrates far into the grotto, but 

 when the light begins to fail the hoarse voices of the inhabitants become audible, and it would be 

 difficult to form an idea of the horrible noise occasioned by thousands of these birds in the dark parts 

 of the cavern. Their shrill and piercing cries strike upon the vaults in the rocks, and are repeated by 

 the subterranean echoes. The Indians showed us the nests of the Guacheros by fixing a torch to a 

 long pole ; these nests were fifty or sixty feet above our heads, in holes of the shape of funnels, with 

 which the roof of the grotto is pierced like a sieve. The noise increased as we advanced, the 

 birds becoming scared by the torches we carried, but when the din somewhat abated, immediately 

 around us we heard at a distance the plaintive cries of others at roost in the ramifications of the 

 cavern. It seemed as if different groups answered each other alternately. The Indians enter the 

 Cueva del Guachero once a year, near Midsummer. They go armed with poles, with which they 

 destroy the greater part of the nests. At that season several thousand birds are killed ; and the old 

 ones, as if to defend their brood, hover over the heads of the Indians, uttering terrible cries. The 

 young, which fall to the ground, are opened on the spot. Their peritoneum is found extremely 

 loaded with fat, and a layer of fat reaches from the abdomen to the vent, forming a kind of fatty 

 cushion between the legs. At the period commonly called at Caripe the " oil harvest," the Indians 

 build huts with palm leaves near the entrance and even in the porch of the cavern, where, with a 

 fire of brushwood, they melt in pots of clay the fat of the young birds just killed. This fat is known 



