3i8 STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



a wide range, and includes several species. Dorippe facchino is 

 found both in the Mediterranean and at Hong-Kong. There is 

 no good reason to suppose that two such monstrosities could not 

 have originated independently ; ^ although it is conceivable that the 

 ova, in past ages, may have been somehow carried from one place 

 to the other, especially when we know that there is geological 

 evidence that the Mediterranean Sea in past geological times — 

 Palaeozoic, Mesozoic, and even Tertiary — communicated with the 

 Indian Ocean across north Arabia and also with the Bay of Bengal 

 across north India.^ 



' Facchino ' in Italian means ' porter,' and the specific name may 

 have been given in allusion to the supposition of its using its 

 dorsal legs like arms to carry loads ! 



A writer in Chambers' s Journal for November 1890, on 'Jungle 

 Notes in Sumatra,' p. 663, says: 'These Hornbills are very remarkable 

 birds. I cannot imagine any system of natural selection which 

 could have developed those preposterous-looking beaks. Was it 

 because those with the largest beaks could best defend their 

 families against Monkeys and Snakes ? But what size of beak did 

 they start with? If they were so persecuted a race, would not 

 their enemies have exterminated them before they had time to 

 develop their weapons ? You cannot, I suppose, allow less than 

 five thousand years for the process, and if they had to begin with 

 a beak the size of a Fowl's, the Monkeys alone would " wipe them 

 out " in ten j'ears.' 



There are many kinds of Hornbills in existence, commencing 

 from that with a bill not larger than that of a small Toucan, to 



' Mathematicians might tell you that the chances of two identical forms having 

 originated independently are as 'infinity to one.' But is this so? How many crystals 

 of this system, or of that, acquire the same geometrical form, although they originated 

 independently, and are made up of different elements ? 



^ Fragments of Earth Lore, by Professor James Geikie. 



