Marvels of the Universe 1075 
elsewhere they were killed out by competition. Amongst these indeterminate forms of birds is the 
Guacharo here illustrated and shown with its nest made of clay and its eggs. (The specimens have 
been photographed from the collection in the Natural History Museum of Munich.) This strange 
bird was first described to the scientific world by the great German traveller, Humboldt, who met 
with it in some extraordinary caverns in Venezuela, and for a long time it was thought that this Oil 
Bird (so called because it subsists largely on oily nuts and develops, especially in its nestling young, 
much oil or fat in its skin glands) was confined in its distribution to this one particular part of 
Venezuela ; but it has since been met with elsewhere in caves in Northern South America and the 
Island of Trinidad. In structure the Oil Bird is related to the owls, the goatsuckers, the trogons, 
and other picarian birds, and is the survivor, no doubt, of a generalized group from which most of 
these forms originated. Its coloration is very like that of goatsuckers—a mixture of chocolate- 
brown, cream-yellow, grey and white ; brown predominating. The bird forms colonies of many 
individuals, which congregate and build their nests of plastered clay in dark caverns. They are 
mainly of nocturnal habits, and fly out in the dusk to seek for the fruits and nuts on which they 
feed. Their nestlings are much sought after by the Amerindian savages on account of their oily 
flesh, but to Europeans they seem to have a disgusting taste, like the smell of cockroaches. The adult 
birds are also killed for the oil their bodies contain. This oil keeps well and burns brightly in lamps. 
THE ANIMATED OAT 
BY EDWARD STEP, F.L.S. 
OCCASIONALLY, one may still see in country cottages the quaint little toy-house with two doors, 
from one of which a man emerges when there is a prospect of rain, and from the other a woman 
Bu permission of] [Sir HW. H. Johnston, G.C.M.G. 
GUACHARO, OR OIL BIRD. 
A kind of Goatsucker peculiar to South America; of night-flying habits, and making its clay-plastered nest in dark caverns. 
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