BIRDS. 545 



The breeding habits of these birds are as strange as is their appearance. 

 A short quotation from A. R. Wallace is given here, and some farther 

 remarks will show the essential points : — 



" I had sent my hunters to shoot, and while I was at breakfast they 

 returned, bringing me a fine Buceros bicomis, which one of them assured 

 me he had shot while feeding the female, which was shut up in a hole in a 

 tree. I had often read of this curious habit, and immediately returned to 

 the place, accompanied by several of the natives. After crossing a stream 

 and a bog, we found a large tree leaning over some water, and on its lower 

 side, at a height of about twenty feet, appeared a small hole, and what 

 looked like a quantity of mud, which I was assured had been used 

 in stopping up the large hole. After a while we heard the harsh cry 

 of a bird inside, and could see the white extremity of its beak put out. 

 I offered a rupee to any one who would go up and get out the bird, with 

 the egg or young one, but they all declared it was too difficult, and they 

 were afraid to try. I therefore very reluctantly came away. In about an 

 hour afterward,' much to my surprise, a tremendous, loud, hoarse screaming 

 was heard, and the bird was brought to me, together with a young one 

 which had been found in the hole. This was a most curious object, as 

 large as a pigeon, but without a particle of plumage on any part of it. It 

 was exceedingly 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." 



To this a few explanatory remarks may be appended. The female 

 bird, as the breeding time draws near, takes her position in some hollow 

 tree, and then both birds proceed to wall up the opening with mud and 

 ordure, leaving a narrow slit-like opening through which the female 

 receives all her food of fruit which the male regularly brings to her. If 

 incubation has progressed far, the female is a sorry-looking sight when 

 taken from her hole. She is wasted and dirty, and her wings are so stiff 

 that she cannot fly. It is difficult to see how such a habit could have 

 arisen. The advantages gained seem very slight, and one can hardly 

 realize that they counterbalance the danger to the female if the male 

 should be killed. The hornbills all belong to the Old World ; in size they 

 vary between a raven and a jay. 



In the forests of tropical America the toucans seem to take the place of 

 the hornbills of the Old World ; at least so far as large bill and fruit-eating 

 habits go. They, too, make their nests in hollow trees, but they do not 

 practise that plastering art of the hornbills, which makes one recall those 

 weird tales of some culprit, or, it may be, rival lover, of the Middle Ages, 

 being walled up alive in some vault. Exactly why these birds have such 



