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Updated: June 11, 2025
They come in well-fed condition, and are shot in such quantities that every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the banks of the Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of several days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter.
The particulars wherein it differs from the supposed toucans are so many and striking that it will be superfluous to dwell upon them in detail. They will be obvious at a glance.
"I can't say; for the naturalists, who have been as much puzzled as you are by this peculiarity, have been unable to explain it." "Then I am more learned than they are," said l'Encuerado, with a magisterial air. "Do you know, then, why toucans have such exaggerated beaks?" "Because they have been made by a wise Creator," replied the Indian.
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 remasticating the food.
Don Pablo's pistols were all the fire-arms they had, and Guapo had no other weapon than his macheté. With their present means, then, there was very little chance of their killing any game, even should they have fallen in with it. But they saw none as yet, except some birds, such as parrots, macaws, and toucans, that fluttered among the leaves.
On the one side we have baboons, lions, elephants, buffaloes, and giraffes; on the other spider-monkeys, pumas, tapirs, anteaters, and sloths; while among birds, the hornbills, turacos, orioles, and honeysuckers of Africa contrast strongly with the toucans, macaws, chatterers, and hummingbirds of America.
These cries have a vague resemblance to the syllables Tocano, Tocano, and hence, the Indian name of this genus of birds. At these times it is difficult to get a shot at Toucans, for their senses are so sharpened that they descry the hunter before he gets near the tree on which they are perched, although he may be half-concealed among the underwood, 150 feet below them.
On the hypothesis of indefinite variability, it is then hard to say why pigeons with bills like toucans, or with certain feathers lengthened like those of trogans, or those of birds of paradise, have never been produced. This, however, is a question which may be settled by experiment.
It is pleasant, when the sun is bright, and the trees are green, and when flowering shrubs and sweet-smelling tropical trees scent the balmy atmosphere at eventide, to lie extended at full length in a canoe, and drop easily, silently, yet quickly, down the current of a noble river, under the grateful shadow of overhanging foliage; and to look lazily up at the bright blue sky which appears in broken patches among the verdant leaves; or down at the river in which that bright sky and those green leaves are reflected; or aside at the mud-banks where greedy vultures are searching for prey, and lazy alligators are basking in the sun; and to listen, the while, to the innumerable cries and notes of monkeys, toucans, parrots, orioles, bemtevi or fly-catchers, white-winged and blue chatterers, and all the myriads of birds and beasts that cause the forests of Brazil, above all other forests in the world probably, to resound with the gleeful songs of animated nature!
The forest was haunted by myriads of gay insects, butterflies with wings of dazzling lustre, birds of brilliant plumage, humming-birds, golden orioles, toucans, and a host of solitary warblers.
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