of India and Burmah. 1 75 



easterly skirt or Siam side of the range, occurring in pairs or 

 small parties of five or six, incessantly calling to each other in 

 loud plaintive screams, '■^ whey -whey o, whey-whey o^^ and, while 

 engaged feeding, keeping up a low murmuring cackle like Par- 

 rots. Their flight is smooth and deliberate, like that of Buceros pu- 

 saran, not with alternate flappings and sailings like B. albirostris, 

 B.plca, or B. bicornis; and it is performed at great elevations, 

 especially when crossing over from mountain -top to mountain- 

 top. Keeping thus ever at immense heights, and being withal as 

 quick-sighted and wary as the rest of the genus, it may readily 

 be imagined how difficult this bird is to procure with the gun. 

 I succeeded, in fact, in " bagging^' but one specimen, and wound- 

 ing another, which escaped, during my cold-weather excursion 

 into the Teuasserim Mountains in January 1855. I procured 

 two more, some years subsequently. In the case of the specimen 

 here figured, its companions showed much excitement when it 

 fell, coming boldly down to the lower branches, with loud screams, 

 and remaining within easy shot while I was reloading. This 

 occurred at Thengangyee sakau (literally, " halting-place of great 

 Thengans"), a spot in the forest so named from the huge Thengan- 

 trees about it, situated on the eastern skirt of the range above de- 

 scribed. This is one of the resting-places on the wild path pursued 

 by travellers from the Shan states of Yahan, in Siam, to Moulmein. 

 On revisiting the same spot in March 1859, not a single bird of 

 this kind was to be found there, or in the hills around. Being 

 a frugivorous bird, it has to make partial migrations, as its food 

 fails or passes out of season in one place, to where some other 

 kind of fruit is ripening — a compulsory habit, common also to 

 all the Treronina or fruit- eating Pigeons. I fell in with them, 

 accordingly, during the last-mentioned period, in a very different 

 locality, in the flat forest lying along the south of the Houng- 

 thrau River, considerably to the south of Thengangyee sakan, 

 and on a much lower level. They were on these occasions so 

 wild as not to allow approach within gunshot ; but on my last 

 day's march, which led through the§e forests to the banks of the 

 Houngthrau, whei'e my boats were in readiness to take me down 

 to Moulmein, I came across three of these birds near a Karen 

 clearing. To my surprise, they allowed me to approach within 



