154 < ON THE CLASSIFICATION OP BIRDS. 
to the same station^ and then proceed to swallow it. 
Every one knows that these are the habits of the European 
kingfisher (^Alcedo Upida) and travellers affirm that the 
kinghunters (Halcyon) pursue die same method in the 
forests of the Old AVorld. But it has unfortunately 
happened that systematic naturalists, totally unacquainted 
with the natural habits of the other genera (nearly all 
of which are confined to Tropical America), have fancied 
they were climbing birds, and have consequently placed 
them in other orders, whose organisation and economy 
are widely different. Thus die jacamars, in the lii-gne 
Animal, are placed after the hornbills, and the puff- 
birds ( Tamatia) are associated with the cuckows. These 
unnatural combinations are the inevitable result of laying 
down those arbitrary rules of classification which are 
not founded on natural economy. 
(174.) The manners of the puff-birds, forming the 
genus Tamatia, have been already described.* They sit 
for hours together oil a dead or withered branch, from 
which they dart upon such insects as come sufficiently 
near. The hermit birds (Monassa Vieil.) do the same, 
and frequently rise up perpendicularly in the air, make 
a swoop, and return again to their former station. Similar 
manners also, belong to the jacamars, although their 
flight is weaker. They generally sit on low, naked branches 
in the forest paths, from whence they dart upon butter- 
flies, spearing them with their long bill : their haunts, 
indeed, may frequently be known by the ground being 
strewed with the beautiful wings of their victims, the 
body of which ^hey alone devour. Now, in all the groups 
of this family here noticed, tlie bill is invariably com- 
pressed oil its sides, and generally of considerable length ; 
hut in the Galhvla grandh we first discover a change 
from this structure, and we see a bill considerably broad 
and depressed, — that character, in short, which is in 
unison with the next family. 
(175.) The Trogonidre, or trogons, in one sense, are 
such an isolated group, that naturalists have been iimch 
* Zool. Illust. i. pL 09. 
