cert what Herr Kartert 
us Taldns (dF. 0. 854, 
p 366-366). 
434 HORNBILL 
ee 
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 walk 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 
southern, B. cafer—the “Brom-vogel” of European colonists in 
South Africa—in having the epithema open in front, and thereby 
presenting an appearance quite unique among birds. 
Of the Bucerotinx, 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 Bucerotine. Then comes Rhinoplax, which 
seems properly to contain but one species, the Buceros vigil, B. 
scutatus, 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 structure 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 
twice the length of the rest. Nothing is known of its habits, Its 
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. Osteol. Ser. Mus. Coll. Surg. Engl. i. p. 287); while the solid 
horny mass is further strengthened bya 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. 
