For though one might have found inside only a pair of toucans, or parrots, or a whole party of jolly little monkeys, one was quite as likely to find a poisonous snake four or five feet long, whose bite would have very certainly prevented me having the pleasure of writing this book.

The cage next to the monkeys holds a more pleasant beast; a Toucan out of the primeval forest, as gorgeous in colour as he is ridiculous in shape.

At another we heard the screams of Parrots; at another, the double note of the Toucan; at another, the metallic clank of the Bell-bird, or what was said to be the Bell-bird.

Dialogue with a Toucan.

Dialogue with a Toucan.

This bird is a toucan, of brilliant plumage and monstrous beak.

Selkirk passes near it, with his eyes fixed on the branch which serves as a perch, and the toucan, without stirring, looks at him with a species of calm and placid astonishment.

After which, acting the great nobleman, cutting short the audience he has deigned to grant, the toucan is silent, turns its head, proudly raises one of its wings and busies itself in smoothing, with the point of its large beak, its beautiful greenish feathers, variegated with purple.

At some distance from this spot, still following the margin of a wooded hill, Selkirk sees other birds, some in their nests, others warbling in the shade; all manifesting no more alarm at his presence than did the toucan.

To the shore upon which he landed, he gives the name of Swordfish Beach; the pile of white and red rocks, which he saw through the fog, is the False Coquimbo; he calls Toucan Forest, the wood where he saw that bird for the first time; the Defile of Attack, is that where Marimonda assaulted him with stones; upon these arid rocks, furrowed by deep ravines and abounding in precipices, he has imposed the odious name of Stradling!

By night, he silently climbed the trees to surprise the female of the toucan or blackbird, which he pitilessly stifled over their young brood.

Birds of the boldest wing and brightest huesthe denizens of the woods and the watersof every variety of plumage, habit, song, and sizefrom the splendid macaw and toucan to the uncouth pelican and the shapeless puffinfrom the gigantic ostrich to the beautiful but diminutive golden wren; in short, all the birds which are congregated in this spot come, literally, from every corner of our globe.

There were magnificent hyacinth macaws; green parrots with red splashes; toucans with varied plumage, black, white, red, yellow; green jacmars; flaming orioles and both blue and dark-red tanagers.

Toucans were not uncommon.

I have never seen any other bird take such grotesque and comic attitudes as the toucan.

The toucan is a born comedian.

In one piece of high forest we saw a party of toucans, conspicuous even among the tree tops because of their huge bills and the leisurely expertness with which they crawled, climbed, and hopped among the branches.

It was generally rather silent; we did not hear such a chorus of birds and mammals as we had occasionally heard even on our overland journey, when more than once we had been awakened at dawn by the howling, screaming, yelping, and chattering of monkeys, toucans, macaws, parrots, and parakeets.

Big toucans called overhead, lustrous green-black in color, with white throats, red gorgets, red-and-yellow tail coverts, and huge black-and-yellow bills.

At dinner we had a toucan and a couple of parrots, which were very good.

In the afternoon we got an elderly toucan, a piranha, and a reasonably edible side-necked river- turtle; so we had fresh meat again.

It is the same with the hackles of fowls, the head ornaments of fruit-pigeons, and the bills of toucans.

Again, the parrots, the toucans, the birds of paradise, and many other of the more beautiful exotic species, are fruit-eaters, and reflect their inherited taste in their own gaudy plumage.