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At another time, though the two lads, eagerly observant and with the doctor to back them, needed no showing, their guide pointed to the many brilliantly-tinted birds of the thrush family, at the barbets and trogons, not so brilliant as those of the Western world, but each lovely in itself, while as they went on and on along their meandering river path, the birds that struck them as being most novel and at the same time tame in the way in which they came down the overhanging branches of the great forest trees, as if their curiosity had been excited by the strangers, were the many-tinted plantain eaters, with their crested heads, and the lovely green and crimson touracoos, which, while their violet and crimson relatives wore, as it were, a feather casque, displayed on their part a vivid green ornamentation that passed from beak to nape, which when they were excited looked more like a plume.

They do not, however, feed on the ants, but on the insects they disturb. Besides the ant-thrushes, trogons, creepers, and a variety of other birds, are often seen on the branches of trees above where an ant army is foraging below, pursuing and catching the insects that fly up. The insects caught by the ants are dismembered, and their too bulky bodies bitten to pieces and carried off to the rear.

There were also two species of grouse and a ground pigeon, all good eating. Amongst the smaller birds were trogons, mot-mots, toucans, and woodpeckers. The trogons are general feeders. I have taken from their crops the remains of fruits, grasshoppers, beetles, termites, and even small crabs and land shells. Three species are not uncommon in the forest around Santo Domingo.

A yellow-bellied trogon came quite close, and sat as trogons do, very straight and stiff like a poorly mounted bird, watching passing flycatchers and me and the glimpses of sky. At first he rolled his little cuckoo-like notes, and his brown mate swooped up, saw me, shifted a few feet farther off and perched full of curiosity, craning her neck and looking first with one eye, then the other.

The toucans and trogons flashed from grove to grove, or balanced their bodies under the spray of the jet d'eau; while the humming-birds hung upon the leaves of some honeyed blossom, or prinkled over the parterre like straying sunbeams.

"Well, Nat," said my uncle, who quite enjoyed my thorough admiration, "I should make quite a naturalist of you if I had you with me." "Oh, if I could go!" I cried in an excited tone, at which he merely laughed. "I'd give anything to see those birds alive." "It requires some work and patience, my boy. I was a whole year in the most inaccessible places hunting for those trogons before I got them."

I want a few trogons, and the blue-billed gaper. Then you might get me the green chatterer, and any new birds you could see." "Yes, sir." "And look here, Long; the woods here are the chosen resort of the great argus pheasant. I don't suppose you would be able to come across one, but if you do " "Down him," said Tom Long. "Exactly," said the doctor.

Journey to Juigalpa. Description of Libertad. The priest and the bell. Migratory butterflies and moths. Indian graves. Ancient names. Dry river-beds. Monkeys and wasps. Reach Juigalpa. Ride in neighbourhood. Abundance of small birds. A poor cripple. The "Toledo." Trogons. Waterfall. Sepulchral mounds. Broken statues. The sign of the cross. Contrast between the ancient and the present inhabitants.

Upon the ground, the large curassows, and guans, and the "gallo," with his plumage of bright red. Upon the trees, the macaws, and parrots, and toucans, and trogons. In the waters, the scarlet flamingoes, the ibises, and the tall herons; and in the air, the hawks, the zamuros, the king-vultures, and the eagles. We shall see much of the reptile world, both by land and water.

From this habit alone, the kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers, trogons, and South American puff-birds, might be grouped together by a person who had observed them in a state of nature, but who had never had an opportunity of examining their form and structure in detail.