Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v2.djvu/359

 the banks of rivers to feed on fish, and these accounts also encouraged the erroneous views of the habits of the birds, which, for a long time, prevailed. Toucans, however, are now well known to be eminently arboreal birds, and to belong to a group (including trogons, parrots, and barbets ), all of whose members are fruit-eaters. On the Amazons, where these birds are very common, no one pretends ever to have seen a Toucan walking on the ground in its natural state, much less acting the part of a swimming or wading bird. Professor Owen found, on dissection, that the gizzard in Toucans is not so well adapted for the trituration of food as it is in other vegetable feeders, and concluded, therefore, as Broderip had observed the habit of chewing the cud in a tame bird, that the great toothed bill was useful in holding and re-masticating the food. The bill can scarcely be said to be a very good contrivance for seizing and crushing small birds, or taking them from their nests in crevices of trees, habits which have been imputed to Toucans by some writers. The hollow, cellular structure of the interior of the bill, its curved and clumsy shape, and the deficiency of force and precision when it is used to seize objects, suggest a want of fitness, if this be the function of the member. But fruit is undoubtedly the chief food of Toucans, and it is in reference to their mode of obtaining it that the use of their uncouth bills is to be sought.

Flowers and fruits on the crowns of the large trees of South American forests grow, principally, towards the end of slender twigs, which will not bear any con-