550 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST, SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII. 
nct far from a group of six Painted Storks which they somewhat resembied. 
in the distance. 
B. B. OSMASTON. 
PacuMaRnHt?, C. P. 
14th August 1921. 
No. XVIIL—NOTES ON TWO YOUNG INDIAN HORNBILLS. 
(With a plate.) 
We publish photographs of two young female great Indian Hornbills at present: 
alive in the Society’s rooms. They arrived as the result of an appeal by the: 
Hon. Secretary for a substitute for the late lamented “William” who for 26 years, 
trom his cage behind the ofticial chair, was a source of inspiration and encourage- 
ment to past Honorary Secretaries of the Society. Both birds are females and’ 
have been christened Helen and Joan. Since their arrival they have been fed 
on a mixed diet of boluses of boiled rice, various species of figs, plantains and an 
oceasional tit-bit of meat a regime on which they have thrived and prospered 
exceedingly. From the earliest both Joan and Helen were most cordial in their’ 
welcome to anyone approaching their cage, they connected the event as a pre- 
lude to being fed and signalled their hearty approval with craning necks, quiver- 
ing distended bills and loud and prodigious croaking. This performance they 
repeated with infinite gusto at frequent intervals throughout the day. Blessed 
or cursed with insatiable appetites the mere sound of footsteps passing by their 
cage would suffice to rouse them from seemingly peaceful slumber to frantic and 
noisy efiort. These demonstrations naturally had a disturbing effect on our 
Honorary Secretary, who being a busy man and inclined to be wrathful when 
roused, consigned them frequently to perdition and eventually banished them 
from the Museum to the work room below. But they have since been restored 
to favour, as with the passing of infancy came the attainment of more balanced 
views and a more decorous code of behaviour. Helen and Joan are now con- 
tent to wait for their meals and do not signalise the occasion by quite so great 
a display of the emotions. 
In colour and markings the birds were on arrival an exact replica of the adult. 
They were at that time probably but a few months old and had not vet developed 
the great superstructure of the casque though even at this early stage their bills 
showed signs of this impending development. The first indication of this was a 
shallow grove running along each side of the upper mandible and meeting at a 
point about the middle of the culmen. The profile of the culmen does not how- 
ever lose the perfect curve till about two months later. When it becomes gradually 
notched at the apex of the grooves, the portion of the beak bounded by these 
grooves then takes the appearance of a ridge which develops gradually into the’ 
casque. At the present stage the casque is small, flat and pointed in front. In 
the adult bird it is assumed that the casque, as the name bicornis implies, is con- 
cave in front ending in two points or ‘ horns’ but it is interesting to note that 
while this feature was very evident in a live adult female bird sent to the Society 
by Mr. Tuggersee in March last year, a male specimen which lived with us for 
26 years retained a perfectly flat casque up to the time of its death. 
Was this an individual variation or is the concavity of the casque a distin- 
guishing feature of the female bird ? 
The question arises of what use is the unwieldy appendage to the Hornbill ? 
Pyecraft, in his fascinating book the‘, History of Birds” in explaining the great 
length of the beak in Toucans and Hornbills quote, Bates who, writing of the 
