HORNBILL 433 



his translator (i. p. 296) — "I thinke the same of the Tragopanades, 

 which many men aftirme to bee greater than the ^gle ; having 

 crooked homes like a Ram on either side of the head, of the colour 

 of yron, and the head onely red." Yet this is but an exaggerated 

 description of some of the species with Avhich doubtless his inform- 

 ants had an imperfect acquaintance. Mediaeval Avriters ^ found 

 Pliny's bird to be no fable, for specimens of the beak of one species 

 or another seem occasionally to have been brought to Europe, Avhere 

 they were preserved in the cabinets of the curious, and thus Aldro- 

 vandus Avas able in 1599 to describe and figure {Ornithologia, lib. 

 xii. cap. XX.) under the name of '■^Rhinoceros Avis" the head of 

 what is now called Buceros rhinoceros, though the rest of the bird 

 was unknown to him. When the exploration of the East Indies 

 had extended further, more examples reached Euroj^e, and the 

 " Corvus Indicus cornutus " of Bontius became fully recognized by 

 Willughby and Ray, under the title of the " Horned Indian Raven 

 or Topau called the Rhinocerot Bird." Since their time our know- 

 ledge of the Hornbills has been steadily inci'easing, but on many 

 points there is still great lack of precise information, though the 

 completion in 1882 of Mr. Elliot's Monograph of the Buceroticlse sup- 

 plied a great want, for much diversity of opinion long prevailed as 

 to hoAV many real genera the Family comprises, or how many species. 

 The group, though no doubt can be entertained as to its limits,^ 

 contains many bulky birds, and has never been attractive to private 

 collectors, while several of the species were, and still are, rare even 

 in public museums. Some authors appeared to despair of dividing 

 it satisfactorily, and left all the described species in the Linnsean 

 genus Buceros, others split that genus into more than a score, while 

 Sundevall (Tentamen, pp. 96, 97) recognized only three genera; but 

 it is unquestionable that more should reasonably be admitted, and 

 the present writer, though here adopting Mr. Elliot's determinations, 

 is not prepared to state how many are required. 



That gentleman divides them into two subfamilies, Bucorvlnse, 

 with one genus Buconms, and Biicerotinm with 1 8 genera, 8 of which 

 belong wholly to the Indian Region, 4 to the Ethiopian and 2 to 

 the Australian, while 3 have members in both the Ethiopian and 

 Indian Regions, and one genus occurs in both the Indian and the 

 Australian, though no species is common to any two Regions. The 

 genus Bucorvus (or Bucorax as some write it), and consequently the 

 subfamily Bucoroinm, is confined to Africa, and contains 3 species 

 distinguishable among other characters by their longer legs and 

 shorter toes — the Ground-Hornbills of English writers. From the 



1 E.g. Cardanus, De Subtil, lib. x. (ed. 1611, p. 601), Scaliger, Exercit. 231, 3. 



- Such genera as Euryceros, Scythrojos, and othei's, together with the whole 

 Family Momotidx, which had been at times placed by systematists among the 

 Bucerotidae, have no affinity to them. 



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