TROPICAL BIRDS OF BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



651 



The Rose colored Flamingo, with red wings and black quills, adorns the creeks and 

 rivers of tropical Africa and Asia, and in warm summers extends his migrations as far 

 northwards as Strasburg on the Rhine. The sight of a troop of flamingos approach- 

 ing on the wing, and describing a great fiery triangle in the air, is singularly majestic. 

 When about to descend, their flight becomes slower, they hover for a moment, then 

 their evolutions trace a conical spire, and, finally alighting, they immediately arrange 

 themselves in long array, place their sentinels, and begin their fishing operations. 



The scarlet American Ibis, with black-tipped wings, though inferior in size to his 

 celebrated cousin, the sacred bird of the Egyptians, far surpasses him in beauty. Six 

 feet high, stately as a grenadier of the guards, the American Jabiru stalks along the 

 banks of the morasses. His plumage is white, but his neck and head are black, like 

 his long legs ; his conical, sharp, and powerful black bill, is a little recurved, while 

 that of the stork, to whom he is closely related, is straight. He destroys an incred- 

 ible number of reptiles and fishes, and, being very shy, is difficult to kill. Two sim- 

 ilar species, respectively inhabit Western Africa and Australasia. The roseate American 

 Spoon-bill is particularly remarkable for his curious large beak, dilating at the top 

 into a broad spoon or spatula, which, though not possessed of great power, renders 

 him excellent service in disturbing the mud and seizing the little reptiles and worms 

 he delights to feed on. The J acana possesses enormously long and slender toes, armed 

 with equally long spine-like claws. While pacing the ground they seem as inconvenient 

 as the snow-shoes of a Laplander, and yet nothing can be more suitable for a bird des- 

 tined to stalk over the floating leaves of the Nelumbos and Nymphasas, and to seek 

 for water insects on this unstable foundation. The jacana is found all over tropical 

 America, and is also called the " Surgeon," from the nail of his hinder toe being sharp 

 and pointed like a lancet. 



All these strange and wondrous birds, and numberless others, whose mere enumer^ 

 ation would be fatiguing to the reader, justify the ornithological reputation of the woods 

 and swamps of tropical America. And indeed the feathered races nowhere find a richer 

 field for their development than here, where the vegetable world revels in luxuriant 

 growth ; and myriads of insects, peopling the forest, the field, and the water, furnish 

 each kind according to its wants with an inexhaustible supply of food. The circum- 

 stance that man but thinly inhabits these wilds, is another reason which favors the mul- 

 tiplication of the feathered tribes ; for, in Europe also, birds would no doubt be far 

 more numerous, if the farmer, the sportsman, and so many other enemies were not 

 continually thinning their ranks. To these elements of destruction they are far less 

 exposed in tropical America, and being comparatively but little disturbed, they reign, 

 as it were, over the forest and the open field, over the mountain and the plain, over the 

 river and the lake. 



Although in the torrid zone we hardly ever meet with a single aboriginal species of 

 plant or animal common to both hemispheres, yet the analogy of climate everywhere 

 produces analogous organic forms, and when on surveying the feathered tribes of 

 America, we are struck by any bird remarkable for its singularity of shape or mode of 

 life, we may expect to find its representative in Asia, Africa, or Australia. Thus the 

 enormous beak of the toucan is emulated or surpassed by that of the Indian Calao, or 

 Rhinoceros Hornbill, whose twelve-inch long, curved, and sharp-pointed bill is, moreover, 

 surmounted with an immense appendage, in the form of a reverted horn, the use of 



