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Updated: September 20, 2025
The humming-birds are chiefly to be found near the flowers at which each of the species of the genus is wont to feed. The pie, the gallinaceous, the columbine, and passerine tribes, resort to the fruit-bearing trees. You never fail to see the common vulture where there is carrion.
Soc. 1835, p. 54, and the Rev. E.S. Dixon, 'Ornamental Poultry, 1848, p. 8. For the turkey, Audubon, ibid. p. 4. Mr. Bartlett believes that the Lophophorus, like many other gallinaceous birds, is naturally polygamous, but two females cannot be placed in the same cage with a male, as they fight so much together.
It, however, surpasses them all. It has gained its name from the slight external resemblance that it bears to the gallinaceous form. Its plumage is of a rich orange tint; with the exception of the quill-feathers of the wings, which are of a sooty black hue, and those of the tail, which are brown tipped with yellow.
In the same manner as gallinaceous and struthious birds swallow stones to aid in the trituration of their food, so it appears to be with terricolous worms.
In the adult male of this latter species the horn is half an inch in length, but it is of quite minute size in the female and in the young. These appendages, as Dr. Gunther has remarked to me, may be compared with the combs of gallinaceous birds, and apparently serve as ornaments. Chamaeleo bifurcus. Upper figure, male; lower figure, female. Chamaeleo Owenii.
They, in fact, belonged to an order of birds closely allied to the gallinaceous tribe, and representing it on the continent of Australia as also in several of the Austro-Malayan islands, where the true gallinaceae do not exist.
They joined us again in about a quarter of an hour, each carrying a fowl with metallic-colored plumage dotted over with spots, almost as large as a common turkey. It belongs to the gallinaceous order, and is only found amidst the forests of the New World, particularly in Honduras.
Among gallinaceous birds, on the other hand, where the cock is much larger and more pugnacious than the female, and which are polygamous, the cock does not court the female by song, but seizes her by force, and shows little or no interest in his offspring, neither sharing in the brooding nor feeding the young; and even at times seizing any tempting morsel which the young or the hen may have discovered.
The climate was mild, and the soil so fertile as to afford liberal returns even to their rude husbandry; the rivers and lakes abounded in fish and fowl; the groves swarmed with deer and turkeys, bustards the French called them, after the large gallinaceous bird which they remembered on the plains of Normandy; and the vast expanse of the prairies was blackened by herds of wild cattle, or buffaloes.
After my pathetic experience with chickens, who after a few days of downy content grew ill, and gasped until they gave up the ghost; ducklings, who progressed finely for several weeks, then turned over on their backs and flopped helplessly unto the end; or, surviving that critical period, were found in the drinking trough, "drowned, dead, because they couldn't keep their heads above water"; turkeys who flourished to a certain age, then grew feeble and phantom-like and faded out of life, I weary of gallinaceous rhodomontade, and crave "pointers" for my actual needs.
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