ANTHRACOCEROS FRATERCULUS, 



COCHIN-CHINA PIED HOENBILL. 



Anthracoceros frater cuius, Elliot, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (1878) 5th ser. vol. i. p. 85. 

 Hab. Cochin China. 



This species bears the same relationship to A. malabaricus as A. convexus does to 

 A. coronatus, and apparently represents the first-named in Cochin China. It is a smaller bird 

 than A. malabaricus, and has a differently shaped casque, much more compressed both 

 anteriorly and posteriorly. The black mark on the anterior part does not reach the maxilla, 

 but is confined to the casque, as is witnessed in A. coronatm; this mark in the other two 

 species, however, always extends onto the maxilla. The lateral rectrices, by being white upon 

 their apical third, show that the affinities of this species are with A. malabaricus, and not with 

 the others mentioned. The type (which is fully adult), and a second specimen exactly resembling 

 it (received at the Paris Museum since my description was published), both came from Cochin 

 China ; but the exact locality was not indicated. It is very interesting to notice the distribution 

 of these four species, and observe that, while their habitats are contiguous, yet each is restricted 

 to its own range of country, although the physical qualities of the different regions must resemble 

 each other in very many particulars. Thus A. malabaricus, which has the most northern 

 range of the four, is distributed from Siam and Burmah on the east, along the base of the 

 Himalayas to the jungles of Midnapore, on fhe west of the Bay of Bengal, its southern limit. 

 The Siamese examples of this species, of which I have lately seen a series that were received at 

 the Paris Museum, are very much smaller than Indian specimens in all their dimensions, with 

 small casques that appear like miniatures of those possessed by their larger brethren. The 

 colour of their plumage is precisely like that of A. malabaricus; and the black mark on the 

 casque extends onto the maxilla. They seem to be a diminutive race, but cannot be separated 

 specifically from A. malabaricus. In Midnapore this species meets its ally A. coronatus, 

 the two mingling together ; and the last-named thence ranges throughout the Indian peninsula 

 into Ceylon. A. convexus (the near ally of A. coronatus) is more particularly an island 

 species, confined, so far as is known, to Malacca, Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, and differs from its 

 continental relative in size as well as in the shape and marking of the casque. It is a singular 

 fact that there should be four such closely allied species, two of which differ from their larger 

 relatives in precisely the same way, illustrating in this instance that the influences peculiar to 

 an insular existence, as exhibited in A. convexus, have produced the same effect in regard to 

 its specific characteristics as have those of the continent upon A. f rater cuius. 





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