586 
CATALOGUE. 
food ; and thence to appear migratory to the people of any one of 
these districts. 
This species is gregarious, of staid and serious manners and 
motions, full of confidence and quietness, and seeming to prefer the 
few open and cultivated spots in the wilds it inhabits ; which spots 
are usually limited to the banks of rivers. There, perched on the top 
of some huge fantastic Burr-tree, you may see this large, grotesque, 
and solemn bird sit motionless for hours, with his neck concealed 
between the high shoulders of its wings, and its body sunk upon its 
tarsi. Occasionally it will take a short flight, accompanied by one or 
two companions (for it is a social bird), to some other high tree ; 
never, so far as I have observed, alighting on the ground, nor on a 
low tree. Twenty or thirty birds are commonly found in the same 
immediate vicinity, six or eight upon the same tree, if it be large ; 
and they will continue perched for hours with the immovable gravity 
of judges, now and then exchanging a few syllables in the most sub- 
dued tone of a voice as uncouth as their forms and manners. This 
subdued articulation is not louder than, and is similar in character 
with, the low croaking of a bull-frog. But if the remorseless gunner 
intrude upon this solemn congress, and bring down, without mortally 
wounding, one of its members, the clamours of the captive bird will 
utterly amaze him. I cannot liken this vehement vociferation to 
anything but the braying of a jackass ; its power is extraordinary, 
and is the consequence of an unusually osseous structm'e of the 
rings of the trachsea and of the larynx. 
The Homrai flies with its neck stretched out, its legs retracted, 
and its tail levelled and somewhat expanded. Its flight is straight 
and laborious, with heavy, uniform, frequent motion of its wings, 
which, though ample in size, have not a corresponding degree of 
energy : I presume so from the short, straight, and laborious flight 
of the Homrai ; and Dr. Bramley infers the same thing from the lax 
concatenation of the vertebrae of its back. 
With respect to food, my impression is that the Homrai is almost 
exclusively frugivorous. That it is altogether so, at certain seasons, 
is unquestionable ; for, out of six birds which I opened in January 
and February, there was not one the stomach of which contained 
a single particle of anything but the fruit of the Pipul-tree. 
It is almost helpless on the ground ; with feet incapable of 
grasping, in the raptorial sense, but admirably suited for laying hold 
upon the larger branches of those tall trees in which the species 
seem to spend nearly their whole lives, feeding and roosting in one 
