102 The Sitcccssfu} Breeding of Ttiracus persa. 
The young Touraco commenced to eat alone at the end of 
September, but its parents continued to care for it assiduously. 
It was separated from them in May igi6, when the latter 
were again put into the open air aviary. 
This year the 'J'ouracos nested, had a brood in June 
which were killed by their parents; then a second lot whose 
hatching took place on the 20th of July. One of the young died 
at the end of fifteen days; the other is in perfect health; it has 
developed similarly to the one of the preceding year, and 
actually is two months old. 
The Touracos always receive the same food : potatoes, 
above all bananas cut into small cubes, with grocer's currants. 
Never any insects nor animal food whatever, never any other 
fruits. It is with this small dietary that the parents reared 
perfectly their young. The parents gorged their little ones, 
I believe, in the same way as pigeons. 
The Touracos are very active and restless; they require 
space for flying and many branches, among which they perform 
evolutions with an astonishing agility. 
Their cries are of two categories; they have a kind of 
little gruntling by means of which they seem to confide their 
impressions, and a manner of cooing or w;:rbling, one very 
strong and jjiercing. Male, female, young, all have this same 
cry which, joined to the complete similitude of form and colour, 
render very difficult, if not impossible, the distinction of the 
sexes. 
The only reproduction of Touracos which had been 
obtained up to then is that of I'raser's Touraco (Turacus 
macrorhynchus). of which Mrs. Johnson reared one young in 
1006, in her celebrated aviaries at Burswood, Groombridge 
(Sussex), to whom the Avicultural Society awarded a silver 
medal; the only silver medal it had ever bestowed. 
In 1916 and 1917 three more young Turacus pcrsa were 
bred — two from the old pair, and one from the young bird 
reared in IQ15 (a hen), mated to an imported cock. 
