362 DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM. 



Good Hope : it flies rapidly in pursuit of bees, 

 wasps, and other insects, and builds its nest in 

 holes on the banks of rivers. By the side of the 

 bee-eaters are the momots, which may be well 

 considered as the bee-eaters of America; they 

 have the same habits with the merops. 



We will now pass on to the twenty-sixth case. 

 The five upper shelves contain thirty-four species 

 of king-fishers (alcedo), which belong to both 

 continents; their plumage is in every species 

 shaded with green and blue ; some of them live 

 on the borders of rivers and lakes, and feed on 

 fish which they catch by diving ; others resort to 

 the forests and marshes, where they pursue and 

 feed upon insects. The bottom of this case is 

 filled with horn-bills {buceros), large birds from 

 Africa and the East Indies, remarkable for the 

 size and form of their beak. In some species it 

 is surmounted by a straight or arched projection, 

 which changes its form and increases with age, 

 becoming even as large as the beak itself. 



On the first shelf of the twenty-seventh case 

 are the touracos (corythaix, 111.), and the muso- 

 phaga or plantain-eater, African birds which ap- 

 pear to form a passage from the climbers to the 

 gallinaceae. We have four species of them ; that 

 which has been longest known is the touraco of 

 Buffon (cuculus persa, Lin.), which lives in the 



