Show TiE n JAY TOUUACO WHEN EXIOSED 7 Tit ItAIN HIS BEAUTIFUL OOLOHS DISAPPEAR DIS-APPEAR At the present moment the menagerie of Zoological Society Regents Par has an unusually large number of touraces a species of birds which has not before < exhibited III this country Touraco is the native name of a beautiful group of bird peculiar to Africa gup sometimes called from their food plantain tn They arc generally gen-erally supposed to b allied to the cuckoos aid they are not altogether altoge-ther unlike some of them In their external characters An African I traveler observed P long ago as ISIS I that thu plantain eaters during heavy hea-vy showers hide themselves in the thickest foliage n if they had a I special dread of getting wet There is nothing particularly remarkable re-markable abut tills in fact many I hirdu show a dbjllku to getUng wet feathers but the touracos have a much better reason for this dislike than most other bird M Ver reaux the traveler referred to discovered dis-covered the rcarari when he attempted at-tempted to catch a tou racn which was sheltering itself during a storm of rain He found that when he grasjied lie feathers the brilliant crimson coloring matter stained his hands and later he discovered list the feathers could L ashed almost white To find colors tit iirune in the feathers of a bird Is most unex ixcted and it is not surprising to hear I that one naturalist who purchased pur-chased some skins thought himself to have been deceived with artl tlciallyinlnled birds Iho color comes out 8 readily that when a tourpco is shot and falls Into a pool it stains surrounding water not 8 much with its blood as with the red dye from its wing feathers Yourarosare not however entirely colored by thU peculiar ubstanro they havu a great deal of green about them and lila green is due to the presence of a green pigment which appears to lie convertible into lIe red substance by prolonged bulling Thu gleeu pigment unlike un-like the red is a fast color Most birds that are colored creeli owe this color at least onlyto rile markings upon the feathery and all metallic CJlots such as the brilliant bril-liant greens blues and reds of the humming birds are duo to Iho optical op-tical elro1 caused 11 lie structure of lie feaUiers and have nothing to do with any pigment of lie same color within the substance of the feathers There are thus two sources of color among birds and It is a remarkable re-markable fact that In many cares where lie male birds have a brilliant bril-liant coloration anti the females are soberly clad Uie color I a mechanically mechan-ically caused color for Instance In lie humming birds Thu toura cos do not show this difference between be-tween lie sexes the female reem hies her mate and there 1 no superiority supe-riority on cither iJebut an nl sup equality datmUr Journal |