174 Wonders of the Bird World 



with a semi-transparent skin, so that it resembled more a 

 bag of jelly, with head and feet stuck on, than a real 

 bird." 



Mr. Charles Hose has supplied me with the following 

 account of the taking of a mother Hornbill and her young 

 one in Sarawak, and the accompanying illustrations are 

 from sketches ^ made by him of the incident in question. 

 His account is especially interesting as confirming the 

 previous reports that the community in general watch over 

 the interests of their imprisoned relations, and combine to 

 render assistance to the captives when the male bread- 

 winner has been shot. Thus he writes from Baram, 

 the province in Sarawak, of which he is the Resident 

 officer — 



" During my visit to Mount Dulit in October 1 89 1 I had 

 the good fortune to find the nest of a Hornbill {Rhj'tido- 

 ceros snbruficollis), and I have much pleasure in handing 

 you my notes of observations made of the habits of this 

 bird. Our attention was first attracted to a quantity of 

 excrement at the base of a large tree, and looking to see 

 where it came from, we discovered a hole in the tree, about 

 fifty feet from the ground. One of my Dyak hunters at 

 once recognized it as the nest of a Hornbill, and proceeded 

 to climb the tree, but was obliged to come down before 

 reaching the nest, as the tree had no low branches to help 

 him. He soon, however, overcame the difficulty in a 

 manner creditable to his ingenuity. Having cut a number 

 of pins or pegs of very hard wood, he drove them into the 

 tree at intervals of about three feet, each pin being about 

 an inch in diameter, and nine inches long. After the first 

 few pins had been driven in, a straight pole was cut about 

 thirty feet long, and one end was driven firmly into the 

 ground in a perpendicular position, at the foot of the tree. 



' These sketches have been pubhshed in the ' Idler' for June 1894, 

 illustrating my article on ' Some Humours of Bird-life.' 



