182 Lieut.-Col. Tickell on the Hornbills of India and Burmah. 



1^". I was on that occasion on my way down the Houngthrau, 

 a clear, pretty stream, shaded by lofty timber, eddying in deep 

 pools under high gravelly banks, breaking into foam and tum- 

 bling over boulders of sandstone, or rippling along shallow beds 

 of clean pebbles and silvery sand. To the last-named spots, just 

 before or during the short twilight of a tropical evening, these 

 Hornbills used to resort in great numbers, allowing my boat to 

 approach pretty near, as it glided down the stream. I could 

 thus watch them on the little sand-flats, hopping freely enough 

 along the ground, and delving their beaks in as if searching for 

 worms or molluscs ; while some stood up to their bellies in the 

 water, apparently much enjoying their bath. As the dusk 

 gathered over the river, I remarked them resorting to roost on 

 the loftiest trees fringing its course. The Karens who live in 

 these virgin forests say that between the " Yowng-yowng " {B. 

 cavatus) and the " Owkhyen net " (the present subject) there is 

 always open war ; and, in truth, I do not remember to have re- 

 marked the two species anywhere together. 



6. BUCEROS (ACEROS) NIPALENSIS (HodgSOu). 



I have very little to add to what is already known of this 

 species from the writings of Hodgson, save that it extends as far 

 south along the south-east Himalayan spurs as the mountains 

 of Tenasserim. I shot a very fine male specimen on the 27th 

 February 1859, on the great spur leading to Mooleyit peak, at 

 an elevation of about 3500 feet. It had crossed over the deep 

 valley separating me from the Napulloo range to the south, and 

 was just about to top the ridge where I was journeying along, 

 when I brought it down by a snap shot through the trees. I 

 sent the skin to the Asiatic Society's Museum in Calcutta, as it 

 was the first and only individual of the species ever met with in 

 British Burmah ; but it differed in nothing noticeable from those 

 procured in Nepal, where (in the Teraie) it is by no means un- 

 common. The flight is as in B.pusaran, and the voice also, save 

 that its croak is monosyllabic. 



