the Fa m ily of Cuculidce. 215 



bidce are respectively placed, it will be found that they mutually 

 represent each other ; all being tenuirostral types. 



But after all, it is more than probable that the birds now before 

 us are restricted to warm latitudes by the nature of their food, and 

 not from any peculiar impatience of cold, arising from the above 

 circumstances. The Cuculidce are insectivorous and frugivorous, 

 for they live both upon insects and fruits ; the former habit, how- 

 ever, is not manifested by those bristles which are usually seen 

 at the mouth of insect-eating birds, because the cuckoos only 

 devour soft caterpillars ; but the latter is manifested by their 

 wide gape, the angle of the mouth being carried far backwards 

 towards or even under the eye: this structure enables the jaws, 

 or mandibles, to be very widely extended, and is a certain indi- 

 cation that such birds feed upon soft fruits, which are swallowed 

 whole. From all this it is clear that the cuckoos, independent 

 of other considerations, can only exist, permanently or temporarily, 

 in warm countries, where insects and fruits abound ; and we accord- 

 ingly find that their geographic distribution has been so regulated. 



So faintly is the scansorial structure indicated in these birds, that 

 but for their natural habits, joined to the position of their toes, we 

 should not suspect they were so intimately connected with the more 

 typical groups of the tribe, as they undoubtedly are. They neither 

 use their bill for climbing like the parrots, or for making holes in 

 trees, like the woodpeckers, neither can they mount the perpendi- 

 cular stems, like the Certhiadae or creepers : and yet they decided- 

 ly climb, although in a manner peculiar to themselves. Having 

 frequently seen different species of the Brizilian cuckoos (forming 

 part of the genus Coccyzus) in their native forests, I may safely 

 affirm that they climb in all other directions than that of the per- 

 pendicular. Their flight is so feeble, from the extreme shortness of 

 their wings, that it is evidently performed with difficulty, and it is 

 never exercised but to convey them from one tree to another, and 

 these flights in the thickly wooded tracts of tropical America are of 

 course very short : they alight upon the highest boughs, and imme- 

 diately begin to explore the horizontal and slanting ramifications, 

 with the greatest assiduity, threading the most tangled mazes, and 

 leaving none unexamined. All soft insects inhabiting such situa- 

 tions laying in their route become their prey ; and the quantities 

 that are thus destroyed must be very great. In passing from one 

 bough to another, they simply hop, without using their wings, and 

 their motions are so quick that an unpractised observer, even if 

 placed immediately beneath the tree, would soon lose sight of the 

 bird. The Brazilian hunters give to their cuckoos the general name 



