314 PROCKKUINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



elevation, anil commenting on the singular exception formed by one 

 species, wherein it attained a medium size, was quite solid, and con- 

 sequently very weighty, Mr. B. called attention to the presence of 

 eye-lashes in these birds, which, he stated, though of course analo- 

 gous in use to those of quadrupeds, yet were different in structure, 

 being nothing more than barblcss feathers, which were developed 

 and annually moulted like other feathers ; and the same, he re- 

 marked, held true with the rictorial and supra-nasal vihrissae of 

 birds, as might easily be seen by examining their condition in a 

 nestling. He affirmed that their presence was of extremely rare 

 occurrence in the class Aves, existing only (so far as he was aware) 

 in the Strigidce, and in the Ostrich and Reua, besides two genera of 

 Insessorial birds, the Buceros (or Hornbill, examples of numerous 

 species of which were exhibited), and in the Crotophaga; (or Ani), a 

 South American and West Indian genus, both of which, he remarked, 

 possessed a protuberance on the ridge of the upper mandible. Now 

 it was very clear that the purpose of eye-lashes was to defend the eye 

 from falling particles of dust, &c. ; and the only reason he could dis- 

 cern, therefore, why these two Insessorial genera should possess the 

 structure in question, to the exclusion of all others, was that the ros- 

 tral prominence must be employed for some purpose liable to detach 

 such particles ; whence he derived the conclusion that the excrescence 

 was not merely ornamental, as some have supposed, but decidedly 

 subservient to some definite object in the bird's economy. What, 

 however, that use might be, must be left to observation to determine; 

 and it would require, it was added, rather nice discrimination to dis- 

 cover what the intent might be of the various modifications of form 

 which the protuberance underwent in different species. Mr. Blyth 

 added a few remarks on the geographical distribution of the Horn- 

 bills, which were restricted to Asia, Africa, and the Oriental Archi- 

 pelago, to which last-mentioned locality, he asserted, those with a 

 large protuberance were principally confined ; which circumstance 

 had given rise to an ingenious prima facie suggestion by Mr. Mudic, 

 in the article Buceros in Partington's Cyclopcsdia of Natural His- 

 tory, to the effect that, subsisting, as the members of this genus do, 

 to a considerable extent, on fruit, and the luxuriant forests of those 

 exuberantly fertile islands (the Indian Archipelago) being inter- 

 tangled in a manner that those of Africa affords no parallel or even 

 approach to, it might be that the prominence in the bills of these 

 birds was designed to divide the flexible vegetation for them, so that 

 they might see and reach those substances on which they feed, which 

 is nearly the same conclusion to which Mr. B. had arrived on reflec- 

 tion upon the co-existence of the protuberance with eye-lashes. 



Mr. Blyth remarked on the habit reported of the Ani (^Crotopha- 

 ga), to alight on the backs of cattle, and feed in the manner of the 

 JBuphagcB, as extremely remarkable as occurring in a genus inhabit- 

 ing a locality where no large ruminants recently existed until intro- 

 duced by Europeans. He then proceeded to call attention to the 



