ALEXANDER THE COPPERSMITH 247 
The sparrow, when seen ‘side by side with the copper- 
smith, looks almost a gentleman! The coppersmith is 
the coarsest bird of my acquaintance, with the excep- 
tion of the vulture. The coarseness of this latter, how- 
ever, is of a different type; it is that of the despised 
outcast, while that of the coppersmith is the coarseness 
of a Whitechapel prize-fighter. 
The coppersmith belongs to the barbet family. This 
is represented in India by seventeen species. The 
whole clan resemble one another very closely in habits. 
All live almost entirely on fruit. All have a loud, 
monotonous note. All are essentially tree-hunting 
birds. I do not remember ever having seen a barbet 
sitting on the ground. All nest in holes in trees. 
The flight of every member of the family is un- 
dulating. The barbets are thus what men of science 
call a well-marked natural family. When you have 
once seen one, you cannot mistake its relations, nor 
confuse them with any other birds. The woodpeckers 
are perhaps their nearest relatives. 
Coppersmiths nest only once in the year, about 
March in most parts of India, but earlier in Madras. 
The bird excavates a hole in a tree in much the same 
way as a woodpecker does. The coppersmith’s beak, 
however, is not so efficient a pick-axe as that of its 
more highly specialized cousin. For this reason barbets 
usually select a place in a tree where the ants have 
been at work, and the wood is, in consequence, begin- 
ning to decay. When once the site has been decided 
upon, the excavation of the nest does not take long. 
A couple of days usually suffice. 
