The Democratic press. [volume] (Ravenna, O. [Ohio]) 1868-1901, 1892-08-10
ALL ABOUT ToucANs.
They Are Sociable Birds, Resembling g
Monkeys in Their Habits.

No fowls of the air more admirably
typify in their own persons the effect
of a forestine tropical fruit-eating life
than the gorgeous toucans. Their big
bill enables them to reach out from
afar at fruits as they sit at their ease
on the trees that bear them, and to
toss them off at gulp in a large and
airv manner that is very character
istic of all the whole-swallowing fruit
eaters. They are gregarious and So
ciable birds, to a great extent or
ganized into fixed community; for
they make common cause against
enemies, such as owls and falcons,
whom they surround and mob, with
one accord, after the fashion of all
dominant races, as rocks do in Eng
| land. Having thus little need for pro-
lection, they are noisy and clamerous
in their native woods, resembling in
! all these respects the other gregarious
fruit eaters, like parrots and monkeys.
In short, they display for us in full per-
| fection the free democratic, fearless,
open and gossipy life naturally engen-
! dered in tropical surroundings among
| powerful and social frugiverous spe-
cies.
But it is more especially the gorge
| Gus coloration of the toucans which
renders them most typical in many
ways of the habits and manners of the
larger fruit-eating birds. Flower
hunting and fruit-eating creatures,
| such as butterflies humming- birds,
cockatoos and lories, almost always
develop in the long run a marked as-
thetic taste for pure and brilliant col
ors, which reacts at last through sexual
selection on the their own appearance.
| Accustomed to seek their food among
bright tropical blossoms or gaudy
Southern forest trees like mangoes and
star-apples, the feathered aesthetes
acquire a hereditary love for color
which influences them in the end in
the choice of their own brilliant mates,
and so secures the perpetuation of the
most beautiful and most gorgeous OF
the kind by unconscious Selections.
And in this respect the Co7qshiU Magd-
zine says that the toucans are absolute
ly unsurpassed in the whole range of
nature; their large and richly-colored
bills, their delicate breast plumage,
and bodies generally, present variety
of melting tints and contrasted hues
nowhere else to be found in equally
close display on any other animal.
People who have only seen stuffed
toucans in museum, however, can
have no proper idea of the astonishing
magnifcence and beauty of their rain
bow coloring in state of nature.
For the most delicate and most irri-
descent of all their hues are those of
the big beak and the soft naked parts
of the face and body! Hore, blue and
green, crimson, orange, and yellow
pass quickly into one another by dainty
gradations. Unhappily the tints OF
the soft parts are SO very evanescent
that they disappear altogether within a
few hours after death, and without them
to harmonic the general effect of the
whole, the gaudy coloring of the per-
manent plumage is apt to strike one,
in museum, as positively garish in
its crudereds and yellows. A living
toucan, on the contrary, though al
most barbaric in its magnifcence, can
never be accused of vulgar bad taste;
it is like St. Marks at Venice, or the
Moorish decorations of the Alhambra
at Granada, polychromatic to the last
degree, yet always beautifully har-
mOnlouS.