Toucan out of the primeval forest, as
gorgeous in colour as he is ridiculous in shape. His general
plumage is black, set off by a snow-white gorget fringed with
crimson; crimson and green tail coverts, and a crimson and green
beak, with blue cere about his face and throat. His enormous and
weak bill seems made for the purpose of swallowing bananas whole;
how he feeds himself with it in the forest it is difficult to guess:
and when he hops up and down on his great clattering feet--two toes
turned forward, and two back--twisting head and beak right and left
(for he cannot see well straight before him) to see whence the
bananas are coming; or when again, after gorging a couple, he sits
gulping and winking, digesting them in serene satisfaction, he is as
good a specimen as can be seen of the ludicrous--dare I say the
intentionally ludicrous?--element in nature.

Next to him is a Kinkajou; {91a} a beautiful little furry bear--or
racoon--who has found it necessary for his welfare in this world of
trees to grow a long prehensile tail, as the monkeys of the New
World have done. He sleeps by day; save when woke up to eat a
banana, or to scoop the inside out of an egg with his long lithe
tongue: but by night he remembers his forest-life, and performs
strange dances by the hour together, availing himself not only of
his tail, which he uses just as the spider monkey does, but of his
hind feet, which he can turn completely round at will, till the
claws point forward like those of a bat. But with him, too, the
tail is the sheet-anchor, by which he can hold on, and bring all his
four feet to bear on his food. So it is with the little Ant-eater,
{91b} who must needs climb here to feed on the tree ants. So it is,
too, with the Tree Porcupine, {91c} or Coendou, who (in strange
contrast to the well-known classic Porcupine of the rocks of
Southern Europe) climbs trees after leaves, and swings about like
the monkeys. For the life of animals in the primeval forest is, as
one glance would show you, principally arboreal. The flowers, the
birds, the insects, are all a hundred feet over your head as you
walk along in the all but lifeless shade; and half an hour therein
would make you feel how true was Mr. Wallace's simile--that a walk
in the tropic forest was like one in an empty cathedral while the
service was being celebrated upon the roof.

In the next two cages, however, are animals who need no