92 Mr. C. F. M. Swynnerton on 



the bird's bill : they included the larger anal-angle eye-spot 

 and one 'antenna' (as Pat might have called it) o£ each 

 hindwing and practically nothing else. I then saw Biddy 

 miss two of the butterflies : she incautiously put them up by 

 stalking too rapidly up to them : but made excellent shots 

 at them as they rose. And I saw Pat seize a rising Charaxes 

 brutiis and actually capture at its guava and swallow a 

 Charaxes candiope, Godfc. The first butterfly was held only 

 by a wing and broke away." Later in the observation 

 comes an allusion to the birds' sharp-sightedness : '' I had 

 seen them pass nothing over, and they had in addition found 

 and eaten two Cetoniid beetles (Pat a Pachnodes impressa, 

 Goldf., and his lady a Keptamdes pol^chrous), neither of 

 which I had seen at all, though very keenly on the look- 

 out." 



From an enfomohn/ieal point o£ view the successful misdirec- 

 tion by the anal-angle " head,'' the infliction l/i/ birds of 

 the type of damage that is so commonly seen in butterflies' 

 wings, the sharp-sightedness of the birds, and the unwariness, 

 when thoroughly absorbed in feeding, of the otherwise highly 

 wary larger species of Charaxes, are all of interest. Mr. C 

 G. Davies has, if I remember rightly, alluded to the last 

 point lately in ' The Field.' 



At a later period the Hornbills took to perching on the 

 balustrade of the verandah close up to some bunches of 

 bananas that were tied there, and seizing the Charaxes that 

 were feeding on them. Here they appeared to be i'av more 

 dexterous and successful than w^here they had to first get 

 within range. They show great swiftness and accuracy, too, 

 in the capture of ra})idly moving insects : 1 have seen three 

 individuals of the active Carabid beetle, Polijhirnia tenignia^ 

 Dohrn, seized in quick succession in this way. 



Nothing seems too small for llicm — an exaggerated state- 

 ment, perhaps, when I remember how they left alone the 

 *' micros " that were destroying my cabbages ; but size may 

 not have been the only factor here, and, in any case, it is 

 wonderful what small things these huge bii-ds — that thiidv 

 nothing of swallowing a large rat or a large snake or 



