And on the lofty branches of the higher trees, the hornbill[3] (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] The remarkable excrescence on the beak of this extraordinary bird may serve to explain the statement of the Minorite friar Odoric, of Portenau in Friuli, who travelled in Ceylon in the fourteenth century, and brought suspicion on the veracity of his narrative by asserting that he had there seen “birds with two heads."[5]

[Footnote 1:  The greater red-headed Barbet (Megalaima indica, Lath.; M. Philippensis, var.  A. Lath.), the incessant din of which resembles the blows of a smith hammering a cauldron.]

[Footnote 2:  Brachypternus aurantius, Linn.]

[Footnote 3:  Buceros pica, Scop.; B. coronata, Bodd.  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 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 observed the same habit in a species of Buceros in Java. (See HORSFIELD and MOORE’S Catal.  Birds, E.I.  Comp.  Mus. vol. ii.) It is curious that a similar trait, though necessarily from very different instincts, is exhibited by the termites, who literally build a cell round the great progenitrix of the community, and feed her through apertures.]

[Footnote 4:  The hornbill is also frugivorous, 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 pressure of his beak.  The hornbill abounds in Cuttack, and bears there the name of “Kuchila-Kai,” or Kuchila-eater, from its partiality for the fruit of the Strychnus nux-vomica.  The natives regard its flesh as a sovereign specific for rheumatic affections.—­Asiat.  Res. ch. xv. p. 184.]

[Footnote 5:  Itinerarius FRATRIS ODORICI, de Foro Julii de Portu-vahonis.—­HAKLUYT, vol. ii. p. 39.]

As we emerge from the deep shade and approach the park-like openings on the verge of the low country, quantities of pea-fowl are to be found either feeding amongst the seeds and nuts in the long grass or sunning themselves on the branches of the surrounding trees.  Nothing to be met with in demesnes in England can give an adequate idea either of the size or the magnificence of this matchless bird when seen in his native solitudes.  Here he generally selects some projecting branch, from which his plumage may hang free of the foliage, and, if there be a dead and leafless bough, he is certain to choose it for his resting-place, whence he droops his wings and suspends his gorgeous train, or spreads it in the morning sun to drive off the damps and dews of the night.