RAMPHASTOS ERYTHRORHYNCHUS, Ginez.
Red-billed Toucan.

SpreciFic CHARACTER.

Ramph. rostro rubro; culmine luteo; gents, gutture, pectoreque, albis lutescenti-tinctis ; tectri-
cibus caudee supertoribus flavis.

Crown of the head, back, wings, abdomen and tail black; throat and breast white, with a faint
wash of straw-colour pervading the latter, and bounded below by a crescent of fine deep
scarlet ; upper tail-coverts sulphur-yellow ; under tail-coverts deep scarlet ; bill rich crimson-
red on the sides, bounded posteriorly by a transverse band, which as well as the edges of
both mandibles and the point of the lower is deep black ; culmen yellow, becoming of a
pale horn-colour at the tip ; across the base of the bill a broad band, which on the upper
mandible is yellow, and on the under rich bluish lead-colour, the two colours blending
into each other at the edges of the mandibles; immediately at the base of the bill a strong
line of black; orbits greenish blue, with a ring of bluish lilac around the eye; irides dark
brown ; naked skin of the throat bluish green ; above the orbits at the base of the upper
mandible a small patch of white feathers; feet blue, with a lilac tinge on their under
surface; nails black.

Total length, 22 inches; bell, 61; wing, 9; tail, 65; tarsi, 2.

Female.—Similar to the male in colour, but somewhat smaller in size.

Toucan Surinamensis niger ex albo, flavo, et rubro mixtus, Petiv. Gazoph., t. 44. fig. 13.

Red-beaked Toucan, Edw. Glean. Nat. Hist., p. 58. pl. 238.—Lath. Gen. Syn., vol.i. p. 328.

Ramphastos Tucanus, Linn. Syst. Nat. Edit. 10.—Borowski, Natur., tom. ii. p. 97. t. 6.

Tucana Cayanensis gutture albo, Briss. Orn., 4to. tom. iy. p. 416. pl. xxxi. fig. 2, 8vo. tom. ii.
p: 159.

Ramphastos erythrorhynchus, Gmel. Edit. Linn, Syst. Nat., tom. i. p. 355.—Wagl. Syst. Av.
Ramphastos, sp. 2.—Vig. in Zool. Journ., vol. ii. p. 475.—Gould, Mon. of Ramph.,
pl. 3.—Less. Traité d’Orn., p. 170, Ramphastos, sp. 2.

Toucan a gorge blanche, Buff. Pl. Enl. 262.—Ib. Hist. des Ois., tom. vii. p. 121.

Ramphastos erythrorhynchos, Lath. Ind. Orn., vol. i. p. 136.—Gray and Mitch. Gen. of Birds,
vol. 1. p. 403, Ramphastos, sp. 1.

Ramphastos erythrorhyncos, Vieill. Ency. Méth, Orn., Part III. p. 1429, Ramphastos, sp. 3.

Le Tocan, Levaill. Hist. Nat. des Ois. de Parad., tom. ii. p. 10. pl. 3.

Le Tocan a collier jaune, Levaill. Ib., p. 13. pl.4. (With the scarlet of the breast band and
under tail-coverts abstracted, says Mr. John Natterer, by exposure to light, or the
heat of an oven to which it had probably been subjected to destroy the insects that
had attacked the skin.)

Red-billed Toucan, Lath. Gen. Hist., vol. ii. p. 285.—Shaw, Gen. Hist., vol. viii. p. 367. pl. 47.
—Ib. Nat. Misc., pl. 183.

Ramphastos Levaillanti, Wagl. Syst. Av., Ramphastos, sp. 3.—Less. Traité d’Orn., p. 170,

Ramphastos, sp. 3.

 

 

Tuts is one of the oldest known species of Toucan, a figure and description of it having been published by

 

Petiver in 1709; it occurs among the drawings by Madame Merian, formerly in the possession of Sir Hans
Sloane, and now in the British Museum (where it is represented nearly of the natural size, with a small
bird between its mandibles); it is also figured by Edwards, Brisson and Borowski, and it is doubtless the
bird to which Linneus, in the 10th Edition of his “Systema Nature,” assigned the specific appellation of
Tucanus ; as, however, this term, or rather that of Zucana, was applied by all the preceding writers in a
generic rather than a specific sense, it becomes necessary to adopt that of erythrorhynchus of Gmelin for the
species here represented. The synonyms given above have all reference to the present bird.

The richly ornamented and elegant Ramphastos erythrorhynchus is very numerously distributed over the
whole of the densely wooded fluviatile regions of the river Amazon, and Mr. John Natterer found it on