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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HIG-HOR |
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HORNBILL , the English name long generally given to all the birds of the family Bucerotidae of modern ornithologists, from the extraordinary horn-like excrescence (apithema) developed on the bill of most of the species, though to which of them it was first applied seems doubtful. Among classical authors Pliny had heard of such animals, and mentions them (His'. Nat. lib. x. cap. lxx,) under the name of Tragopan; but he deemed their existence fabulous, comparing them with Pegasi and Gryphonesin the words of Holland, his translator (vol. i. p. 2g6)" I thinke the same of the Tragopanades, which many men affirme to bee greater than the 1Egle; having crooked hornes
East
cornutus
Willughby
great
great
helmet -hornbill, a native of Sumatra and Borneo. This is easily distinguished by having the front of its nearly vertical and slightly convex epithema composed of a solid mass of horn 5 instead of a thin coating of the lightApparently correlated with this structure is the curious thickening of the " prosencephalic median septum " of the cranium as also of that which divides the " prosencephalic " from the " mesencephalic chamber," noticed by Sir R. Owen (Cat. Osteol. See. Mus. Roy. Coll. Surg. England, i. 287) ; while the solid horny mass is further strengthened by a backing of bony props, directed forwards and meeting its base at right angles. This last singular arrangement is not perceptible in the skull of any other species examined by the present writer. Land cellular structure found in the others' So dense and hard is this portion of the " helmet " that Chinese and Malay artists carve figures on its surface, or cut it transversely into plates, which from their agreeable colouring, bright yellow with a scarlet rim, are worn as brooches or other ornaments. This bird, which is larger than a raven, is also remarkable for its long graduated tail, having the middle two feathers nearly twice the length of the rest. Nothing is known of its habits. Its head was figured by George Edwards in the 18th century, but little else had been seen of it until 1801, when John Latham described the plumage from a specimen in the British Museum, and the first figure of the whole bird, from an example in the Museum at Calcutta, was published by General Hardwicke in 1823 (Trans. Linn. Society, xiv. pl. 23). Yet more than twenty years elapsed before French naturalists became acquainted with it.In the Bucorvinae we have only the genus Bucorvus, or Bucorax as some call
Great Indian Hornbill (B. bicornis). (After T'ickell's drawing in the Zoological Society's library.) least two and perhaps more species, distinguishable by their longer legs and shorter toes, the ground-hornbills of English writers, in contrast to the Bucerotinae which are chiefly arboreal in their habits, and when not flying move by short leaps or hops, while the members of this group walk and run with facility. From the days of James Bruce at least there are few African travellers who have not met with and in their narratives more or less fully described one or other of these birds, whose large size and fearless habits render them conspicuous objects. As a whole the hornbills, of which more than 5o species have been described, form a very natural and in some respects an isolated group, placed by Huxley among his Coccygomorphae. It has been suggested that they have some affinity with the hoopoes (Upupidae), and this view is now generally accepted. Their supposed alliance to the toucans (Rhamphastidae) rests only on the apparent similarity presented by the enormous beak, and is contradicted by important structural characters. In many of their habits, so far as these are known, all hornbills seem to be much alike, and though the modification in the form of the beak, and the presence or absence of the extraordinaryexcrescence,' whence their name is derived, causes great diversity of aspect among them, the possession of prominent eyelashes (not a common feature in birds) produces a uniformity of expression which makes it impossible to mistake any member of the family. Hornbills are social birds, keeping in companies, not to say flocks, and living chiefly on fruits and seeds; but the bigger species also capture and devour a large number of snakes
This remarkable habit, almost simultaneously noticed by Dr Mason in Burma, S. R. Tickell in India, and Livingstone in Africa, and since confirmed by other observers, especially A. R. Wallace ? in the Malay Archipelago, has been connected by A. D. Bartlett (Prot. Zool. Society, 1869, p. 142) with a peculiarity as remarkable, which he was the first to notice. This is the fact that hornbills at intervals of time, whether periodical or irregular is not yet known, cast the epithelial
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