According to Aristotle (Hist. An viii. 12) a dwarfish race of Troglodytes dwelt on the upper course of the Nile, who possessed horses and were in his opinion the Pygmies of fable. But the best known of these African cave-dwellers were the inhabitants of the “Troglodyte country” (Τρωγλοδυτική) on the coast of the Red Sea, as far north as the Greek port of Berenice, of whom an account has been preserved by Diodorus (iii. 31) and Photius (p. 454 Bekker) from Agatharchides of Cnidus, and by Artemidorus in Strabo (xvi. 776). They were a pastoral people, living entirely on the flesh of their herds, or, in the season of fresh pasture, on mingled milk and blood. But they killed only old or sick cattle (as indeed they killed old men who could no longer follow the flock), and the butchers were called “unclean”; nay, they gave the name of parent to no man, but only to the cattle which provided their subsistence. This last point seems to be a confused indication of totemism. They went almost naked; the women wore necklaces of shells as amulets. Marriage was unknown, except among the chiefs—a fact which agrees with the prevalence of female kinship in these regions in much later times. They practised circumcision or a mutilation of a more serious kind. Their burial rites were peculiar. The dead body, its neck and legs bound together with withies of the shrub called paliurus, was set up on a mound, and pelted with stones amidst the jeers of the onlookers, until its face was completely covered with them. A goat's horn was then placed above it, and the crowd dispersed with manifestations of joy. It is supposed that the Horim or Horites, the aboriginal inhabitants of Mount Seir, if their name is correctly interpreted “cave-dwellers,” were a kindred people to the Troglodytes on the other side of the Red Sea.
TROGON, a word apparently first used as English[1] by G. Shaw (Mus. Leverianum, p. 177) in 1792, and now for many years accepted as the general name of certain birds forming the family Trogonidae of modern ornithology. The trogons are birds of moderate size: the smaller is hardly bigger than a thrush and the largest less bulky than a crow. In most of them the bill is very wide at the gape, which is invariably beset by recurved bristles. They seize most of their food, whether caterpillars or fruits, on the wing, though their alar power is not exceptionally great, their flight being described as short, rapid and spasmodic. Their feet are weak and of a unique structure, the second toe, which in most birds is the inner anterior one, being reverted, and thus the trogons stand alone, since in all other birds that have two toes before and two behind it is the outer toe that is turned backward. The plumage is very remarkable and characteristic. There is not a species which has not beauty beyond most birds, and the glory of the group culminates in the quetzal (q.v.). But in others golden green and steely blue, rich crimson[2] and tender pink, yellow varying from primrose to amber, vie with one another in vivid coloration, or contrasted, as happens in many species, with a warm tawny or a sombre slaty grey—to say nothing of the delicate freckling of black and white, as minute as the markings of a moth’s wing—the whole set off by bands of white, producing an effect hardly equalled in any group. The plumage is further remarkable for the large size of its contour-feathers, which are extremely soft and so loosely seated as to come off in scores at a touch, and there is no down. The tail is generally a very characteristic feature, the retrices, though in some cases pointed, being often curiously squared at the tip, and when this is the case they are usually barred ladder-like with white and black.[3] According to J. Gould, they are larger and more pointed in the young than in the old, and grow squarer and have the white bands narrower at each succeeding moult. He also asserts than in the species which have the wings coverts freckled, the freckling becomes finer with age. So far as has been observed, the nidification of these birds is in holes of trees, wherein are laid without any bedding two roundish eggs, generally white, but certainly in one species (quezal) tinted with bluish green.
The trogons form a well-marked family, belonging to the
coraciiform birds, and probably to be placed in that assemblage
near the colies (see Mouse Bird) and swifts (q.v.). The remains
of one, T. gallicus, have been recognized by A. Milne-Edwards
(Ois. foss. de la France, ii. 395, pl. 177, figs. 18–22) from the Micocene
of the Allier. This fortunate discovery seems to account for the
remarkable distribution of the trogons at the present day. While
they chiefly abound, and have developed their climax of magnificence,
in the tropical parts of the New World, they yet occur in
the tropical parts of the Old. The species now inhabiting Africa,
forming the group Hapaloderma, can hardly be separated generically
from those of the Neotropical Trogon, and the difference
between the Asiatic forms, if somewhat greater, is still comparatively
slight. It is plain then that the Trogons are an exceptionally
persistent type; indeed in the whole class few similar instances
occur, and perhaps none that can be called parallel. The extreme
development of the type in the New World just noticed also furnishes
another hint. While in some of the American trogons (Pharomacrus,
for instance) the plumage of the females is not very much
less beautiful than that of the males, there are others in which
the hen birds retain what may be fairly deemed a more ancient
livery, while the cocks flaunt in brilliant attire. Now the plumage
of both sexes in all but one[4] of the Asiatic trogons, Harpactes,
resembles rather that of the young and of the females of the
American species which are modestly clothed. The inference from
this fact would seem to be that of the general coloration of the Trogons
prior to the establishment, by geographical estrangement, of the
two types was a russet similar to that now worn by the adults of
both sexes in the Indian region, and by a portion only of the
females in the Neotropical. The Ethiopian type, as already said,
very closely agrees with the American, and therefore would be
likely to have been longer in connexion therewith. Again, while
the adults of most of the American trogons (Pharomacrus and
Euptilotis excepted) have the edges of the bill serrated, their young
have them smooth or only with a single notch on either side near
the tip, and this is observable in the Asiatic trogons at all ages.
At the same time the most distinctive features of the whole group,
which are easily taken in at a glance, but are difficult to express
briefly in words, are equally possessed by both branches of the
family, showing that they were in all likelihood—for the possibility
that the peculiarities may have been evolved apart is not to be
overlooked—reached before the geographical sundering of these
branches (whereby they are now placed on both sides of the
globe) was effected.
About sixty species of trogon are recognized, which J. Gould in the second edition of his Monograph of the family (1875) divides into seven genera. Pharomacrus, Euptilotis and Trogon inhabit the mainland of tropical America, no species passing to the northward of the Rio Grande nor southward of the forest district of Brazil while none occur on the west coast of Peru or Chile. Prionotelus and Tmetotrogon, each with one species, are peculiar respectively to Cuba and Haiti. The African form Hapaloderma has two species, one found only on the west coast, the other of more general range. The Asiatic trogons, Harpactes (with eleven species according to the same authority), occur from Nepal to Malacca, in Ceylon, and in Sumatra, Java and Borneo, while one species is peculiar to some of the Philippine Islands. (A. N.)
TROGUS, GNAEUS POMPEIUS, Roman historian from the country of Vocontii in Gallia Narbonensis, nearly contemporary with Livy, flourished during the age of Augustus. His grandfather served in the war against Sertorius with Pompey, through whose influence he obtained the Roman citizenship; hence the name Pompeius, adopted as a token of gratitude to his benefactor. His father served under Julius Caesar in the capacity of secretary and interpreter. Trogus himself seems to have been a man of encyclopaedic knowledge. He wrote, after Aristotle and Theophrastus, books on the natural history of animals and plants, frequently quoted by the elder Pliny. But his principal work was Historiae Philippicae in forty-four
- ↑ Trogonem (the oblique case) occurs in Pliny (H. N. x. 16) as the name of a bird of which he knew nothing, save that it was mentioned by Hylas, an augur, whose work is lost; but some would read Trygonem (turtle-dove). In 1752 Möhring (Av. Genera, p. 85) applied the name to the “Curucui” (pronounced “Suruquá,” vide Bates, Nat. Amazons, i. 254) of Marcgrav (Hist. nat. Brasiliae, p. 211), who described and figured it in 1648 recognizably. In 1760 Brisson (Ornithologie, iv. 164) adopted Trogon as a generic term, and, Linnaeus having followed his example, it has since been universally accepted.
- ↑ Anatole Bogdanoff determined the red pigment of the feathers of Pharomacrus auriceps to be a substance which he called “zooxanthine” (Comptes rendus, Nov. 2, 1857, xlv. 690).
- ↑ In the trogon of Cuba, Prionotelus, they are most curiously scooped out, as it were, at the extremity, and the lateral pointed ends diverge in a way almost unique among birds.
- ↑ Or two species if N. macloti be more than a local form of H. reinwardti.
