Beaks and Bills 243 
parrot than in any other bird. This arrangement allows 
much freedom of motion. 
It is not clearly known what use the immense beaks 
of toucans may serve, although there seems little excuse 
for this ignorance in those who know the birds in their 
native haunts. The delicate, spongy texture renders the 
Fic. 187.—Toucan, showing enormous bill used perhaps for reaching fruit on 
the tips of branches. 
clumsy-looking appendages exceedingly light, and they 
are usually banded or marked with brilliant hues,—blue, 
yellow, red, brown, green, or black. But lght as the 
beaks are in these birds, in the unrelated but similarly 
monstrous-beaked hornbills the weight must be con- 
siderable, for the first two vertebre of the neck in these 
