JWRNBILLS. 407 



trustwortliy witnesses in order to be believed. Dr. Livingstone in his ' Missionary 

 Travels in South Africa' relates his experience as follows: "The first time I saw this 

 bird was at Kolobery, where I had gone to the forest for some timber. Standing by 

 a tree, a native looked behind me and exclaimed, 'There is the nest of a korwe.' I 

 saw a slit only about half an inch wide and three or four inches long, in a slight hollow 

 of a tree. Tliiiiking the word korwe denoted some small animal, I waited with interest 

 to see what he would extract. lie broke the clay which surrounded the slit, put his 

 arm into the liole, and brought out a tockus, or red-beaked hornbill, which he killed 

 lie informed me that when the female enters her nest she submits to a real confine- 

 ment. The male plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed 

 his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak." 



Lieuten.ant-Colonel S. 11. Tickell gives the following extract of his notes written 

 down at the time and place of observation, which relates to the concave-cascjucMl horn- 

 bill (Jiuceros bicornis), the 'liomra'i' of the Nepalese, re])resented in the accompany- 

 ing cut : — " On my way back to Jloulmein from Moolegit (a celebrated peak in the 

 Tenasserim range), when halting at Kyik, I heard by the merest chance from the 

 Karen vill.agers that a largo hornbill was sitting on its nest in a tree close to the vil- 

 lage, and that for several years past the same pair of birds ha<l resorted to that spot 

 for breeding. I lost no time, accordingl}-, in going to the jilace next morning, and 

 was shown a hole high u]) in the trunk of a moderately lai-ge straight tree, branchless 

 for about fifty feet from the ground, in which the female, I was told, lay concealed. 

 The hole was covereil with a thick layer of mud, all but a small space, through which 

 she could thrust the end of her bill, and so receive food from the male. 



"One of the \illagcrs at length ascended with great labor, by means of bamboo- 

 pegs driven, into the trunk, and commenced digging out the clay from the bole. 

 While so employed, the female kept uttering her rattling sonorous cries, and the male 

 remained ].crclied on a neighboring tree, sometimes flying to and fro and coming close 

 to us. Of hiin tiie natives a])peared to entertain great dread, saying he was sure to 

 assault them ; and it was with some difficulty I i)revented them from shooting him 

 before they continued their attack on the nest. When the hole wa.s enlarged suffi- 

 ciently, the man who ascen<led thrust in liis arm, but was so .''oundly bitten by the 

 female, whose cries had become perfectly desperate, that he cpiickly withdrew, nar- 

 rowly escaping a tumble from liis frail footing. After wrapping his hand in some 

 folds of cloth, lie succeedeil with some trouble in extracting the bird, a miserable- 

 looking object enough, wasted and dirty. She was h.anded down and let loose on the 

 ground, where she hojiped about, unable to fly, and menacing the bystandei-s with lier 

 bill ; and at lengtli ascended a small tree, where she remained, being too stiff to use 

 her wings and join her mate. At the bottom of the hole, nearly threi; feet from the 

 orifice, was a solitary egg, resting upon mud, fragments of bark, and feathers." 



Xot less interesting is the account of ]\Ir. C. Ilorne in regard to the same species 

 as his observation indicates that it is the female herself that undertakes the jilastoring. 

 The nest was placed in a hole in a sissoo-tree on his lawn, opposite the veranda, so that 

 he could watch every thing through a glass : " On the 29th of April the female went 

 into the hole, and did not again come out. From the time the female went in, the 

 male was most assiduous in feeding her, bringing generally the sm.ill peepul-fig. On 

 April 3Uth I observed the female working hard at closing the orifice with her own 

 ordure. This she must have brought up from the bottom of the hole ; and .she plas- 

 tered it right and left with the flat sides of her beak, as with a trowel. I never saw 



