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Here, also, the forests are adorned with the gay plumage of the red and blue macaws, as also by a toucan with a yellow tail. It is remarkable not only for its bright colour, but for its curious pendent nests, of which frequently fifty are seen hanging together from the branch of a single tree.
I have heard there are some of that sort that can go through any place where they can pass their beaks. Is it a toucan, Ossaroo?" Ossaroo could not tell what a toucan was, never having heard of such a bird. His ornithological knowledge went no further than to the birds of Bengal; and the toucan is found only in America.
Their feathers were green and gold and scarlet and yellow and blue fresh and bright and brilliant as the sky beneath which they were nurtured. The great toucan, with a beak nearly as big as his body, flew clumsily from stem to stem. The tiny, delicate humming-birds, scarce larger than bees, fluttered from flower to flower and spray to spray, like points of brilliant green.
Here, too, the Moscovy duck is numerous; and large flocks of two other kinds wheel round you as you pass on, but keep out of gun-shot. The milk-white egrets, and jabirus, are distinguished at a great distance; and in the æta and coucourito trees you may observe flocks of scarlet and blue aras feeding on the seeds. It is to these trees that the largest sort of toucan resorts.
Now one of the light-blue chatterers, then a lovely trogon, would seize a fruit as it darted by; or the delicate white wing and claret-coloured plumage of a lovely pompadour would glance from the foliage; or a huge-billed toucan would pitch down on a bough above us, and shake off a fruit into the water.
"It was only a moment before somebody saw him, for every farmer had a boy watching, and the cry rang out, 'The toucan, the toucan! I could see people running hurriedly towards us waving shovels, scythes, hoes, and various other implements. The toucan did just what I had hoped he would.
The last importation is a toucan, a South American bird, with a beak like a banana, and a voice like an old sheep in despair. But Tommy, the scarlet macaw, remains prime favourite, and I must say he is clever and knows more than you would think." "Well, at Overdene we used to play a silly game at dessert with muscatels.
At least he volunteers no explanation of the discrepancy, being, doubtless, influenced in his acceptance of the bird as a toucan by the statements of others. Wilson follows the cut of Squier and Davis, and represents the bird with five toes, stating that the toucan is "imitated with considerable accuracy."
From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are being exterminated to swell the annual profits of the millinery trade.
As, however, the authenticity of the tablet itself is not above suspicion, but, on the contrary, is believed by many archæologists to admit of grave doubts, the subject need not be pursued further here. The a priori probability that the toucan was known to the Mound-Builders is, of course, much less than that the manatee was, since no species of toucan occurs farther north than Southern Mexico.
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