- PSITTACIDA. — RAMPHASTIDE. 137 
¢Pogonias) : but there is still a gap, lita no genus yet 
discovered is calculated to fill up. On considering the 
relative difference between the barbuts and the parrots, 
we should say, theoretically, that of all the five groups 
among the latter, one only remains to give us the typical 
structure. The form, manners, and peculiarities of 
these elegant birds are too well known to be here re- 
peated. They climb by grasping ; and the feet possess 
the additional faculty of conveying food to the mouth,—a 
peculiarity confined to these and to the goatsuckers. 
As the parrots appear to form a group precisely 
equivalent to that of the true woodpeckers, we arrange 
them, with a uniformity of result, under five genera, 
namely, the macaws (Platycercus Vieil.), the parrots 
(Psitiacus L.), the cockatoos (Plyctolophus Vieil.), the 
lories (Lorius Bris.), and the ground lories (Platycercus, 
Vig.). Under each of these, as among the woodpeckers, 
are several strongly marked subgenera, or types of 
form ; but we are reluctantly compelled to take no further 
notice of them, in this work, than what will be found in 
the systematic arrangement. 
(154.) The fourth family is represented by the 
Toucans, whose enormous bills give to these birds a most 
singular and uncouth appearance: their feet are formed, 
like those of the parrots, more for grasping than for 
elimbing ;—the latter faculty they donot, indeed, appear to 
possess ; but as they always live among trees, and proceed 
by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping feet 
_ are peculiarly adapted for such habits. Toucans are 
mostly large sized birds, distributed over the New World, 
slender and graceful in their movements, and ornamented 
by rich and glossy colours. The apparent disproportion 
of the bill is one of the innumerable instances of that 
beautiful adaptation of structure to use, which the book of 
Nature every where reveals. The food of these ibe 
principally consists of the eggs and young of others ; 
discover which, nature has given them the most cis 
powers of smell : these organs could not be developed 
under the ordinary form ; the bill, therefore, is made so 
