at orange-coloured
woodpecker[2] as it beats the decaying trees in search of insects,
whilst clinging to the bark with its finely-pointed claws, and leaning
for support upon the short stiff feathers of its tail. 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. Malaharicus, _Jerd_. 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 nuxvomica. The
natives regard its flesh as a sovereign specific