The GtrACHARo. BIRDS. The New Holland Goatsucker. 279 
is neitlier dilated nor serrated on its inner margin. The 
general tint of the plumage is sombre, consisting, as 
usual in the present family, of a mixture of minute 
dots of black, brown, grey, and reddish, but marked on 
the head and neck, and on the wing and tail feathers, 
with white spots of variable form and size. 
These birds are found in Trinidad, and in several 
parts of the north of South America. They are noc- 
turnal birds, and pass the day in the recesses of caverns 
in the mountains, where they collect in vast bands. 
Unlike the other species of this family, the Guacharos 
feed entirely upon fruits and seeds, no insects having 
ever been met with in their alimentary canal ; the food 
of the young also consists of the same matters, and 
hence a great accumulation of fat is produced in them, 
especially in the peritoneum. This furnishes an excel- 
lent oil ; and the Indians of those parts of South 
America where the birds occur, destroy great quan- 
tities of the young every year in order to obtain a 
supply of this grease. The most noted locality for this 
oil-harvest is a cavern at Caripe, called from this 
circumstance the Cueva del Guacharo. Into this cave, 
as Humboldt tells us, the Indians enter once a yeai‘, 
about the festival of St. John. They take with them 
long poles, with which they destroy all the nests within 
reach, and thu.s kill many thousands of the young 
birds. The nests are formd in holes of the walls of 
the cave. During this process the old birds, as if to 
defend their broods, sail over the heads of the Indians 
uttering the most discordant cries. Idie young birds 
are immediately opened, and the fat removed from 
them : it is afterwards melted in clay pots at the 
entrance of the cavern. The oil thus obtained is 
semi-fluid, transparent, and inodorous, and so pure that 
it may be kept more than a year without becoming in 
the least rancid. It is employed in cooking. 
The annual destruction of these birds is so great, 
that, as Humboldt remarks, the whole race would soon 
be extinct, were it not for certain circumstances which 
favour the preservation of the species. The birds 
doubtless breed in many caverns which are never visited 
b}' the oil-gatherers ; and even in the cavern of Caripe, 
the voices of these birds are heard in galleries to which 
the Indians never penetrate, partly perhaps from their 
inaccessibility, but principally on account of certain 
superstitious notions connected in their minds with the 
cave and its inhabitants. Humboldt, describing his 
visit to the cavern of Caripe, says — “ We had much 
trouble in persuading the Indians to pass the anterior 
portion of the cave, the only part which they frequent 
in their annual collection of fat. It required all the 
authority of the padres to make them advance as far 
as a spot where the ground rises suddenly at an angle 
of sixty degrees, and where the torrent forms a small 
subterranean cascade. The natives attach mystical 
ideas to this cavern, inhabited by nocturnal birds. 
Man, they say, should dread places which are lighted 
neither by the sun nor by the moon. To go to the 
Guacharos, is to join one’s fathers, to die.” 
This celebrated cavern is pierced in a vertical rock : 
its entrance measures eighty feet in width, and seventy- 
two feet in height; and through the cave there runs, 
as indicated in the above extract, a subterranean 
torrent. For a distance of upwards of four hundred 
feet, the daylight still struggles with the darkness of 
the cavern ; and the seeds brought in by the birds to 
feed their young, but accidentally dropped by the way, 
germinate in the scanty soil of the floor, producing 
etiolated plants, which, as Humboldt remarks, might be 
taken for the phantoms of plants banished from the 
outer world. Further in, the loud and discordant cries 
of the Guacharos were heard, repeated and increased by 
the echoes on every hand. The seeds found in the 
crops of the young birds opened in the cavern are 
supposed by the Indians to possess medicinal virtues, 
and are carefully preserved under the name of Semilla 
del Guacharo. 
THE NEW HOLLAND GOATSUCKER {JEgotheles 
Novep. Hollandice) — The remainder of the birds of this 
family form three genera, the members of which are 
almost entirely confined to Australia and the islands 
intervening between that continent and Asia, the 
majority of the species being natives of Australia. 
The New Holland Goatsucker is a charming little 
species, measuring only about nine inches in length. 
It has a very broad depressed bill, of which, however, 
only the tijr projects beyond the forehead, and the 
whole gape is bordered above with numerous long 
bristles, many of which are furnished with little barbs. 
The plumage is mottled with grey and brown, paler 
beneath ; a greyish white collar runs round the neck, 
and there is a crescent-shaped spot of the same on the 
back of the head. The tarsi are long and slender. 
This species is met with all over the southern parts of 
Australia, and also in Van Diemen’s Land, where it is 
known, according to Mr. Gould, as the Little Moreporh^ 
a name which will be explained when wo come to 
describe the Podargi. It is a somewhat solitary bird, 
more than two being rarely found together ; its habits 
are nocturnal, and it feeds upon night-flying or cre- 
puscular insects, being especially fond of mosquitoes, 
according to M. Jules Verreaux. During the day it 
dwells in the spouts or hollow branches of the trees, 
and wlien disturbed in its retreat, makes a hissing 
noise like the ov/1, which it also resembles very closely 
in its carriage. When the trunk of the tree on which 
it has taken up its abode is tapped with a stone, the 
little inmate will ascend in his spout and peep out to 
see whether he is threatened with any danger. If the 
tree be lofty, he again descends in his dwelling ; but if 
the noise be repeated, or the disturbance about the 
tree continue, he flies oft' to another tree which offers 
a similar refuge. It is in these cavities, without 
making any nest, that the female deposits her eggs and 
brings up her young. The eggs are four or five in 
number ; and Mr. Gould states that at least two broods 
are reared by each pair of birds in the year. 
THE TAWNY-SHOULDERED PODARGUS {Podargus 
humeralis). The Podargi, which are peculiar to Aus- 
tralia and New Guinea, in which countries about eight 
species have been discovered, are amongst the largest 
species of this family, and distinguished from the pre- 
ceding species by a much greater strength of bill. The 
head is of large size, and the gape enormously wide ; 
the feet are stout, and the outer toe has a certain power 
of being reversed. The Tawny-shouldered Podargus. 
