434 HQRNBILL 



days of Bruce there are few travellers in that country who have 

 not met with and in their narratives said more or less of one or 

 other of these birds, whose large size and fearless habits render 

 them conspicuous as they Avalk or run on the ground, or when 

 disturbed perch on trees. The precise range of the several forms is 

 not known, but the genus is found from Abyssinia to Natal, and from 

 the Gold Coast to Zambesia. The northern forms differ from the 

 southei^n, B. cafer — the " Brom-vogel " of European colonists in 

 South Africa — in having the ejnthema open in front, and thereby 

 presenting an appearance quite unique among birds. 



Of the JBucerotinse, all of which are thoroughly arboreal in habit, 

 Mr. Elliot recognizes only two species of Buceros, one B. rhinoceros 

 (being, as already said, that whose head, with its unique up-turned 

 epithema, was known to Aldrovandus) from Malacca, Sumatra, and 

 Borneo, and the other, B. silvestris (with the epithema straight) 

 peculiar to Java. Hardly less extraordinary than the first of these 

 is the single species separated to form the genus Dichoceros, in which 

 the epithema is a broad plate, slightly convex in the middle and 

 rising on either side in a prominent ridge ending in two projecting 

 points. This is D. bicornis, the " Homrai " of Anglo-Indian writers, 

 found not only in the hilly forests of India but throughout the 

 Malay Peninsula and reaching Sumatra. The genus Hydrocorax 

 seems hardly separable from the last, but, with its 3 species, is 

 peculiar to the Philippine Islands, and thus these genera contain 

 the largest species of the Bucerotinge. Then comes Ehinoplax, which 

 seems properly to contain but one species, the Buceros vigil, £. 

 scutatiis, or B. galeatus of authors, commonly known as the Helmet- 

 Hornbill, a native of Sumatra and Borneo. This is easily distin- 

 guished by having the front of its nearly vertical and slightly 

 convex epithema composed of a solid mass of horn •'• instead of a thin 

 coating of the light and cellular sti'ucture found in the others. So 

 dense and hard is this portion of the " helmet " that Chinese and 

 Malay artists carve figures on its surface, or cut it transversely into 

 plates, which from their agreeable colouring, bright yellow with a 

 scarlet rim, are worn as brooches or other ornaments. This bird, 

 which is larger than a Raven, is also remarkable for its bare neck 

 and long graduated tail, having the two middle feathers nearly 

 !, at-J^ twice the length of the rest. Nothing is known of its habits."?^ Its 

 " f head was figured by Edwards in 1755, but little else was known 



1 Apparently correlated -with this structure is the curious thickening of the 

 " prosencephalic median septum " of the cranium as also of that which divides 

 the "prosencephalic" from the "mesencephalic chamber," noticed by Sir R. 

 Owen {Cat. OsteoJ. Ser. Mus. Coll. Surg. Engl. i. p. 287) ; while the solid 

 horny mass is further strengthened by a backing of bony props, directed forwards, 

 and meeting its base at right angles. This last singular arrangement, not per- 

 ceptible in the skull of any other species, does not seem to have been described. 



