990 Mr. BlytKs Report for December Meeting, 1842. [No. 143. 



thighs, belly, and vent, ferruginous-bay.* The Society possess fine 

 specimens of both sexes of this large species from the Munneepore 

 hills, and Dr. Pearson has a male from the vicinity of Darjeeling, 

 where others have been met with. It has merely a slight bulge in 

 place of a casque, and the upper mandible only is marked with a 

 series of broad transverse grooves, six or eight in number, which 

 appear, with the entire corneous substance of the beak, to be pushed 

 forward from behind, by a constant increment at the base of the beak, 

 and to be successively worn away anteriorly; the same is very ob- 

 vious in various other species of Hornbill, and the inference deducible 

 from this fact is, that the beak-sheath of birds generally, like their claws, 

 and other modifications of cuticle, continue to grow at base and to be 

 worn away at the extremity, as familiarly exemplified (at least as 

 regards the growing) by the human hair and nails, and in a more 

 or less obvious degree by all analogous productions. 



Next follow several species very closely allied together, the males 

 either resembling in plumage the B. cassidix figured in Griffith's work 

 (Vol. VII, pi. to p. 434), or having the head and neck uniformly 

 bright rufous, as in the Calao de Waygiou (B. ruficollis, Vieillot), 

 figured in one of the plates to Labillardiere's Voyage, and also the 

 B. cristatus (ante) ; approaching in this to J5. Nipalensis : the females 

 of all (so far as known) have the head and neck black; and excepting 

 B. cristatus and apparently some immediate congeners to that species, 

 the casque is transversely plaited, and the same naked, inflatable, 

 coloured gular skin exists as in B. Nipalensis. Such are — 



B. pucoran f?J, Raffles, obscurely indicated in Lin. Trans. XIII, pt. 

 II, p. 293; this being doubtless either the present or the next species, 

 but most probably the present one ; and the gular skin is stated to be 

 yellow: B. ruficollis, apud nos, ante, p. 176. Male having the medial 

 part of the crown and the whole occiput and nape dark rufous bay, or 

 deep maronne, and the sides of the head and neck, with the front of the 

 latter, glistening yellowish-white, — precisely as in the figure cited of B. 

 cassidix, only that the maronne colour is more developed on the occiput 

 and nape than is at least represented in that figure, and forms the usual 

 crest in this genus : all the other parts are greenish-glossed black, except 

 the tail which is buffy-white. Bill yellowish-white, the basal por- 



* The same sexual diversity of colouring obtains in the nestling plumage. 



