HORN-PIE—HUIA 437 
feature in Birds) produces a uniformity of expression which makes 
it impossible to mistake any member of the Family. Hornbills are 
social birds, keeping in companies, not to say flocks, and living 
chiefly on fruits and seeds; but the bigger species also capture and 
devour a large number of snakes, while the smaller are great 
destroyers of insects. The older writers say that they eat carrion, 
but further evidence to that effect is required before the statement 
can be believed. Almost every morsel of food that is picked up is 
tossed into the air, and then caught in the bill before it is swallowed. 
They breed in holes of trees, laying large white eggs, and when the 
hen begins to sit the cock plasters up the entrance with mud or 
clay, leaving only a small window through which she receives the 
food he brings her during her voluntary imprisonment. 
This remarkable habit, almost simultaneously noticed by Dr. 
Mason in Burma, Tickell in India, and Livingstone in Africa, but 
since confirmed by other observers, especially Mr. Wallace? in the 
Malay Archipelago, has been connected by Mr. Bartlett (Proc. Zool. 
Soc. 1869, p. 142) with a peculiarity as remarkable, which he was 
the first to notice. This is the fact that Hornbills at intervals of 
time, whether periodical or irregular is not yet known, cast the 
epithelial layer of their gizzard, that layer being formed by a 
secretion derived from the glands of the proventriculus or some 
other upper part of the alimentary canal. The epithelium is 
ejected in the form of a sack or bag, the mouth of which is closely 
folded, and is filled with the fruit that the bird has been eating. 
The announcement of a circumstance so extraordinary naturally 
caused some hesitation in its acceptance, but the essential truth of 
Mr. Bartlett’s observations has been abundantly confirmed by 
Professor Flower (tom. cit. p. 150), and especially by Dr. Murie (op. 
cit. 1874, p. 420), and what seems now to be most wanted is to 
know whether these castings are really intended to form the hen- 
bird’s food during her confinement. 
HORN-PIE, a local name for the LAPWING, the first syllable refer- 
ring to its crest which the bird in fullest vigour sets up on high, and the 
last to its plumage that on the wing appears to be black and white. 
HOWLET, a form of Owlet, the diminutive of OWL, which has 
preserved the prefixed aspirate in some way that etymologists find 
hard to explain. 
HUIA, the Maori name, adopted by the English in New 
Zealand, of a bird of that country, the only member of its genus, 
1 In his interesting work (i. p. 213), he describes a nestling, of the species 
above figured, which he obtained as ‘‘a most curious object, as large as a pigeon, 
but without a particle of plumage on any part of it. It was exceedingly plump 
and soft, and with a semi-transparent skin, so that it looked more like a bag of 
jelly, with head and feet stuck on, than like a real bird.” 
