i86 THE FOOD OF ANIMALS 



monkeys, which, to the eye surveying them from below, looked 

 Hke pigmies flitting about among its branches. Immense flocks 

 of the large fruit -pigeons, and of the smaller members of that 

 numerous and beautiful family, crowded to this rendezvous, their 

 wings keeping up a constant whirring in the air by their coming 

 and going; scores of the Great Hornbill [Buceros galeahis), with 

 their 5 -foot expanse of wing; and myriads of smaller birds, 

 whose varied calls and notes alone indicated their presence, 

 flocked from far and near to this inexhaustible storehouse (and 

 its produce could not be less than tens of thousands of bushels 

 of figs), and yet the vast assemblage but sparsely populated this 

 single magnificent specimen of the vegetable kingdom." Some 

 of the large fruit-eating Pigeons are able to bolt fruits of con- 

 siderable size, and to this end their long beaks are capable of 

 great distension at the base. This is the case, for example, with 

 the Nutmeg- Pigeons of South-east Asia, which swallow nutmegs 

 whole, rejecting them again after the mace with which they are 

 invested has been utilized. 



TOUCANS (Rhamphastid^) 



An interesting adaptation to fruit- eating is found in the 

 gaudily-coloured Toucans of South America, which possess im- 

 mense beaks flattened from side to side. The use of this remark- 

 able arrangement is suggested by Bates (in The Naturalist on the 

 Amazons) in the following passage: — "Flowers and fruit on the 

 crowns of the large trees of South American forests grow prin- 

 cipally towards the end of slender twigs, which will not bear any- 

 considerable weight; all animals, therefore, which feed upon fruit, 

 or on insects contained in flowers, must of course have some 

 means of reaching the ends of the stalks from a distance. . . . 

 The purpose of the enormous bill here becomes evident. It is 

 to enable the Toucan to reach and devour fruit while remaining 

 seated, and thus to counterbalance the disadvantage which its 

 heavy body and gluttonous appetite would otherwise give it in 

 the competition with allied groups of birds. The relation be- 

 tween the extraordinarily lengthened bill of the Toucan and its 

 mode of devouring food is therefore precisely similar to that 

 between the long neck and lips of the Giraffe and the mode of 

 browsing of the animal. The bill of the Toucan can scarcely 

 be considered a very perfectly-formed instrument for the end to 



