The Bell-birds of America. 405 



pendulous. His note is loud and clear, like the sound of a 

 bell, and may be beard at the distance of three miles. In the 

 midst of these extensive wilds, generally on the dried top of 

 an aged mora, almost out of gun-reach, you will see the Oam- 

 joanero. No sound or song from any of the winged inhabitants 

 of the forest, not even the clearly-pronounced f Whip-poor- 

 Will/ from the goat-sucker, causes such astonishment as the 

 toll of the Campane7 , o. }> 



(C With many of the feathered race he pays the common 

 tribute of a morning and an evening song ; and even when 

 the meridian sun has shut in silence the mouths of almost 

 the whole of animated nature, the Campanero still cheers 

 the forest. You hear his toll, and then a pause for a minute, 

 then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, 

 and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight 

 minutes and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop 

 in the mid chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and 

 Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him ; so sweet, 

 so novel, and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white 

 Oampanero. He is never seen to feed with the other Contingas, 

 nor is it known in what part of Guiana he makes his nest." 



Proceeding a little further northwards in the forests bor- 

 dering the northern coast of Venezuela, we meet with a third 

 Bell-bird, the Ghasmorhynchus variegatus. In this species the 

 adult male has again a white body- plumage ; but his wings 

 are black and his head is brown, so that he cannot easily be 

 confounded with either of the former species. His bare throat 

 is sparingly clothed with small black feathers, as in the 

 Araponga of Brazil, but besides this there are numerous small 

 fleshy caruncles dependent from the lower part of the throat, 

 which in adult birds attain a considerable length. The female, 

 however, is very like the female of the Brazilian species. This 

 Bell-bird extends along the coast of Venezuela into the forests 

 of Trinidad, where its existence is well known to the colonists. 



To find a fourth, and in some respects still more wonderful, 

 species of Bell-bird, we must go further northwards across the 

 isthmus of Panama into Chiriqui and Costa Rica. Here is the 

 abode of the Three-wattled Bell-bird, Ghasmorhynchus tri- 

 carunculatus, the male^of which exhibits several very marked 

 differences from those of its three southern congeners. In the 

 first place the head, neck, and breast of this species are alone 

 of the glossy white which is so characteristic of the genus, the 

 whole hinder portion of the body, including the wings and the 

 tail, being of a deep chesnut red. Besides, not content with 

 a single caruncle springing from the base of the bill which 

 distinguishes his brother of Cayenne, the male of this Bell- 

 bird throws out two additional elongated wattles from the 



