On Toucans and Hornbills: Readings in Early Modern Ornithology from Belon to Buffon*

ON TOUCANS AND HORNBILLS: READINGS IN EARLY MODERN ORNITHOLOGY FROM BELON TO BUFFON* Paul J. Smith In Les Delices de Leide,1 an anonymous travel guide from 1712, French tourists and ‘autres curieux’ are invited to take a walk along the curiosities of Leiden. The walk is made up of concentric circles from the outer canals to the town centre. Guidebook in hand, the tourist arrives at the well-known Anatomical Theatre. At that moment – in the centre of the town and in the middle of the book – the very read- able style changes dramatically into a catalogue: seventy pages listing and numbering every single object of the Anatomical Theatre. Some curiosities are singled out and described in much detail: an Egyptian mummy, a Grecian vase and – the lengthiest description of all – the bill of a hornbill. Paradoxically, Leiden’s main curiosities, stored and exhibited in the town centre, turn out to be exotic objects that trans- port the visitor away from the centre to remote times and far away countries. It thus announces the image that Holland will have in the coming centuries until at least Baudelaire’s ‘pays de Cocagne’: a little, neat country furnishing an entrance to the outer world. In the description of the hornbill (see appendix), some strange things happen. From the very opening of the text the bird is confused with another species – the toucan –, and authorities are quoted from times long before both birds were known to the learned world: Pliny, Hesychius of Alexandria (5th century AD), and Varinus Phavorinus (16th century). Another sixteenth-century authority, André Thevet, in fact never spoke of hornbills, only of toucans. There is also a strange anecdote about a long-billed bird shot at the battle of Lepanto (1571) in the Corinthian Sea – a place where neither toucans nor hornbills are found. This curious text will serve us as a point of reference, not only for its own sake, but also because its broad intertext will provide a more I thank Peter Mason (Rome) for having corrected my English. 1 Anonymus, Les Delices de Leide, Une des célèbres villes de l’Europe [. .] (Leiden: 1712). See Smith P.J., “Wandelen in de Délices de Leide (1712)”, De zeventiende eeuw 22 (2006) 185–208. ENENKEL etal(E)_f04_75-119.indd 75 9/6/2007 7:26:30 PM 76 paul j. smith general insight in early modern ornithology and into the sometimes confusing way in which unknown, exotic birds – from both the West and the East Indies – are seen, described, classi ed and thus introduced into Western scienti c discourse. For the sake of clarity, it is necessary to give some brief relevant ornithological information on the birds under discussion. Toucans are birds with enormous, brightly coloured bills, sometimes almost as long as their bodies. They are found wild only in American tropical forests. Within the suborder of Piciformes (woodpeckers and picarian allies), they form a family of thirty-seven species (from the largest crow-sized species of the genus Ramphastos to the lesser toucanets and aracaris). Like woodpeckers, toucans have two toes in front and two behind. Hornbills only super cially resemble toucans in the size of their bills, but these are less fancifully coloured and are usually surmounted by a horny casque. The hornbill family consists of forty- ve species, all from the Old World. Except for the two species of African ground hornbills, which forage in open country, they live in the tropical forests of Africa and Asia. According to current ornithological taxonomy, the hornbills (Bucerotidae) belong to the suborder of the Coraciiformes, to which king sh- ers, bee-eaters, rollers and hoopoes also belong, characterised, as can be read in modern manuals, ‘by having their three front toes joined for part of their length, a condition known as “syndactyly”’.2 Compared to the toucans, the size of some hornbills is enormous, especially the Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis, 120 cm), the Rhinoceros Hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros, 110 cm), and the Wreathed Hornbill (Aceros undulatus, 100 cm). A bird in ight is impressive, not only for its format but also because of its noise: each wing stroke ‘makes a loud “whoosh” that sounds in the distance exactly like the chuf\ ng of an old steam locomotive’.3 This characteristic can explain why, in the heat of the battle of Lepanto, the hornbill mentioned in the Delices was spotted and shot. Although to modern eyes the two families are very distinct from each other, when they were rst introduced to Europe toucans and hornbills were confused by early modern zoologists, as can be deduced from Les Delices de Leide. The birds have this in common with other non-related species that more or less resemble one other by way of ‘convergent 2 Austin O.L. Jr., Birds of the World. A survey of the twenty-seven orders and one hundred and \ fty- ve families (London: 1962) 175. 3 Austin, Birds of the World 184. ENENKEL etal(E)_f04_75-119.indd 76 9/6/2007 7:26:31 PM.

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