338 
ANIMALS OF EGA. 
Chap. V. 
forest, near Ega, in large flocks, probably, assemblages 
of birds gathered together from the neighbouring Ygapo 
forests, which are then flooded and cold. The birds 
have now become exceedingly tame, and the troops 
travel with heavy laborious flight from bough to bough 
amongst the lower trees. They thus become an easy 
prey to hunters, and every one at Ega, who can get a 
gun of any sort and a few charges of powder and shot,, 
or a blow-pipe, goes daily to the woods to kill a few 
brace for dinner ; for, as already observed, the people of 
Ega live almost exclusively on stewed and roasted 
Toucans during the months of June and July. The 
birds are then very fat, and the meat exceedingly sweet 
and tender. I did not meet with Cuvier's Toucan on 
the Lower Amazons ; in that region, the sulphur and 
white-breasted Toucan (Ramphastos Vitellinus) seems to 
take its place, this latter species, on the other hand, being 
quite unknown on the Upper Amazons. It is probable 
they are local modifications of one and the same stock. 
No one, on seeing a Toucan, can help asking what is 
the use of the enormous bill, which, in some species, 
attains a length of seven inches, and a width of more 
than two inches. A few remarks on this subject may 
be here introduced. The early naturalists, having seen 
only the bill of a Toucan, which was esteemed as a 
marvellous production by the virtuosi of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries, concluded that the bird must 
have belonged to the aquatic and web-footed order, 
as this contains so many species of remarkable develop- 
ment of beak, adapted for seizing fish. Some travellers 
also related fabulous stories of Toucans resorting to 
