Some Foreign Bird Architects. 



exhausted by his toils " a very shadow of his former 

 self." 



Dr. Livingstone has given the following very inter- 

 esting account of his observations of one of the Horn- 

 bills during his missionary travels in South Africa. 

 1 The first time I saw this bird," he writes, " was at 

 Kolobery, where I had gone to the forest for some 

 timber. Standing by a tree, a native looked behind 

 me and exclaimed, ' There is the nest of a Korwe.' I 

 saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or 

 four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree. Think- 

 ing the word * korwe ' denoted some small animal, I 

 waited with interest to see what he would extract. He 

 broke the clay which surrounded the slit, put his arm 

 into the hole, and brought out a Tockus, or Red-beaked 

 Hornbill, which he killed. He informed me that when 

 the female enters her nest she submits to a real con- 

 finement. The male plasters up the entrance, leaving 

 only a narrow slit by which to feed his mate, and which 

 exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes 

 a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches 

 them, and remains with the young until they are fully 

 fledged. During all this time, which is stated to be two 

 or three months, the male continues to feed her and the 

 young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite 

 fat, and is esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives ; 

 while the poor slave of a husband gets so lean that on 

 the sudden lowering of the temperature, which some- 

 times happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls 

 down, and dies." Wallace describes the capture of 

 a young Hornbill and the outward appearance of the 

 nest, as he saw it in Sumatra, as follows : " I returned 



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