EUMOMOTA. 465 



Meeting of the British Association held at Liverpool in 1837, by Mr. Sandbach, the 

 Curator of the Museum of that town, to whom, so we are informed by Jardine and 

 Selby, upwards of twenty specimens were brought by a vessel sailing from Campeche. 

 One of these was acquired by Sir William Jardine and figured by Jardine and Selby in 

 the following year. The bird described by Swainson as Cnjpticus superciliosus was doubt- 

 less from the same source. The same Motmot was soon afterwards found in Yucatan 

 by Cabot, who gave it the name of Momotus yucataneims, and it has been noticed by 

 all subsequent travellers in that country. The only other portion of Mexican territory 

 in which it occurs is the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, where Sumichrast obtained specimens. 

 From Tehuantepec it occurs all along the Pacific coast-region of Central America as far 

 as Costa Rica, and is very abundant in some places in the hotter parts of the country. 

 Thus, in March 1874, it was a very common bird all along the road between Escuintla 

 in Guatemala and the port of San Jose. Further inland we met with it as high as the 

 village of Palin, which is on the slope of the cordillera between Escuintla and Amatitlan. 

 In the interior of Guatemala it occurs in the plains of Salama and Zacapa, a region of 

 large cacti and mimosa trees. It is not a forest bird, but keeps to the second-growth 

 woods and more open districts, and thus probably has increased considerably in 

 numbers with the destruction of the older forests of the coast-region bordering the 

 Pacific Ocean. 



On the eastern side of Central America we have, besides the records of it in Yucatan 

 already mentioned, only notices of its occurrence at San Pedro in Honduras and in 

 Chontales, where Belt met with it. It is also said to occur near Comayagua. In 

 Costa Eica its range seems confined to the country bordering the Gulf of Nicoya and 

 the Pacific Ocean. Beyond Costa Rica it has not been traced, so that Eumomota 

 superciliaris is one of the marked and characteristic species of Central America. 



It has been suggested that there are two forms of this species, a western and an 

 eastern race — the former redder, the latter bluer. Variation to some extent certainly 

 exists, but this appears to be individual and not localized in any way. 



In habits Eumomota superciliaris is sluggish, fearless, and silent during the greater 

 part of the year ; but from the following interesting note on its breeding-habits from 

 the pen of Mr. Robert Owen it would appear that it is both noisy and active during 

 the breeding-season. He writes from San Geronimo, Vera Paz, 21st May, 1860 : — 

 "This appears to be the height of the breeding-season with the 'Torovoces ' (=' Bull- 

 voice,' a local name for this species). They are in full song, if their croaking note 

 may be so termed, and are as noisy and busy now as they are mute and torpid during 

 the rest of the year. I do not know of any sound that will convey a better idea of the 

 note than that produced by the laboured respiration occurring after each time the 

 air is exhausted in the lungs by the spasms of the hooping-cough. 



" The nest of the ' Torovoz ' is subterranean, and is usually found in the banks of 

 rivers, or of watercourses which empty into them. The excavation is horizontal, and 



BIOL. CENTR.-AMEE., Aves, Vol. II., July 1895. 59 



