242 BIRDS. [Cuar. VILL 
and some others equally charming; when at the first 
dawn of day, they wake the forest with their clear réveil. 
It is only on emerging from the dense woods and 
coming into the vicinity of the lakes and pasture of the 
low country, that birds become visible in great quanti- 
ties. In the close jungle one occasionally hears the call 
of the copper-smith!, or the strokes of the great orange- 
coloured woodpecker ? as it beats the decaying trees in 
search of insects, whilst clinging to the bark with its 
finely-pointed claws, and leaning for support upon the 
short stiff feathers of its tail. And on the lofty 
branches of the higher trees, the hornbill® (the toucan 
of the East), with its enormous double casque, sits to 
watch the motions of the tiny reptiles and smaller birds 
on which it preys, tossing them into the air when seized, 
and catching them in its gigantic mandibles as they 
fall. 4 
is “ never seen in the unfrequented 
jungle, but, like the coco-nut palm, 
which the Singhalese assert will 
only flourish within the sound of 
the human voice, it is always found 
near the habitations of men.” — 
E. L. Layarp. 
1 The greater red-headed Barbet 
(Megalaima indica, Lath. ; M. Phi- 
lippensis, var. A. Lath.), the inces- 
sant din of which resembles the 
plows of a smith hammering a 
cauldron. 
2 Brachypternus aurantius, Linn. 
* Buceros pica, Scop. ; B. Mala- 
baricus, Jerd. The natives assert 
that B. pica builds in holes in the 
trees, and that when incubation 
has fairly commenced, the female 
takes her seat on the eggs, and the 
male closes up the orifice by which 
she entered, leaving only a small 
aperture through which he feeds 
his partner, whilst she successfully 
The remarkable excrescence on the beak of this 
guards their treasures from ‘the 
monkey tribes ; her formidable bill 
nearly filling the entire entrance. 
See a paper by Edgar L. Layard, 
Esq. Mag. Nat. Hist. March, 1853. 
Dr. Horsfield had previously ob- 
served the same habit in a species 
of Buceros in Java. (See Hors- 
FIELD and Moorz’s Catal. Birds, 
E. I. Comp. Mus. vol. ii.) It is 
curious that a similar trait, though 
necessarily from very different in- 
stincts, is exhibited by the ter- 
mites, who literally build a cell 
round the great progenitrix of the 
community, and feed her through 
apertures. 
* The hornbill is also frugivor- 
ous, and the natives assert that 
when endeavouring to detach a 
fruit, if the stem is too tough to be 
severed by his mandibles, he flings 
himself off the branch so as to add 
the weight of his body to the pres- 
