HORNBILL 433 
his translator (i. p. 296)—“I thinke the same of the Tragopanades, 
which many men aflirme to bee greater than the Algle; having 
crooked hornes 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 which doubtless his inform- 
ants had an imperfect acquaintance. Medizval writers! 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, where 
they were preserved in the cabinets of the curious, and thus Aldro- 
vandus was 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 Europe, and the 
“Corvus Indicus cornutus” of Bontius became fully recognized by 
Willughby and Ray, under the title of the “Horned Indian Raven 
or Topaw called the Rhinocerot Bird.” Since their time our know- 
ledge of the Hornbills has been steadily increasing, but on many 
points there is still great lack of precise information, though the 
completion in 1882 of Mr. Elliot’s Monograph of the Bucerotidx sup- 
plied a great want, for much diversity of opinion long prevailed as 
to how many real genera the Family comprises, or how many a 
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 Linnzan 
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, Bucorving, 
with one genus Bucorvus, and Bucerotine with 18 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 Bucoraz as some write it), and consequently the 
subfamily Bucorvine, 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 #.g. Cardanus, De Subtil. lib. x. (ed. 1611, p. 601), Scaliger, Hxercit. 251, 3. 
2 Such genera as Euryceros, Scythrops, and others, together with the whole 
Family Momotidx, which had been at times placed by systematists among the 
Bucerotidx, have no affinity to them. 
28 
