THE TOUCAN 285 



nicety, and we found it very difficult, after the first week 

 or two, to keep him away from the dining-room, where he 

 had become very impudent and troublesome. We tried to 

 shut him out by enclosing him in the back-yard, but he 

 used to climb the fence and hop round by a long circuit to 

 the dining-room, making his appearance with the greatest 

 punctuality as the meal was placed on the table." 



The sight of the droll-looking bird, irrepressible and 

 quite unabashed, suddenly turning up, when the house- 

 hold were thinking themselves happily delivered from his 

 presence, must have been "too funny for words." 



He calls the other story an "amusing adventure," but 

 it was something of a scare. The bird concerned was one 

 of the smaller species, the Curl-Crested Toucan which 

 gets its name from the curious top-knot of stiff feathers 

 — really thin horny plates, as Bates describes them, 

 "of a lustrous black colour, curled up at the ends 

 and resembling shavings of steel or ebony wood." Its 

 usual note is not unlike the croaking of frogs, but its 

 cry of distress is effective enough, as the adventure 

 proved. 



" I had shot one of these birds from a rather high tree 

 in a dark glen in the forest, and leaving my gun leaning 

 against a tree-trunk in the pathway, went into the thicket 

 where the bird had fallen, to secure my booty. It was 

 only wounded, and on my attempting to seize it, it set up 

 a loud scream. 



"In an instant, as if by magic, the shady nook seemed 

 alive with these birds, although there was certainly none 

 visible when I entered the thicket. They descended to- 

 wards me, hopping from bough to bough, some of them 

 swinging on the loops and cables of woody lianas, and all 

 croaking and fluttering their wings like so many furies. 



