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Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley - Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the - Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1880-81, - Government Printing Office, Washington, 1883, pages 117-166 by Henry W. (Henry Wetherbee) Henshaw
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aware that there was more than one supposed toucan) is not of
sufficient distinctness to identify the original that was before
the artist's mind, and it would not be safe, therefore, to make
this specimen the subject of far-reaching speculations.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Keel-Billed Toucan of Southern Mexico
(_Rhamphastos carinatus_.)]

Further on he adds, "Leaving aside the more than doubtful toucan, the
imitated animals belong, without exception, to the North American
fauna." Barber, also, after taking exception to the idea that the
supposed toucan carving represents a zygodactylous bird, adds in his
article on Mound Pipes, pp. 280-281 (American Naturalist for April,
1882), "It may be asserted with a considerable degree of confidence that
no representative of an exclusively exotic fauna figured in the pipe
sculptures of the Mound-Builders."


PAROQUET.

The presence of a carving of the paroquet in one of the Ohio mounds has
been deemed remarkable on account of the supposed extreme southern
habitat of that bird. Thus Squier and Davis remark ("Ancient Monuments
of the Mississippi Valley," p. 265, Fig. 172), "Among the most spirited
and delicately executed specimens of ancient art found in the mounds, is
that of the paroquet here presented."

"The paroquet is essentially a southern bird, and though common along
the Gulf, is of rare occurrence above the Ohio River." The above
language would seem to admit of no doubt as to the fact of the decided
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