h 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.

In some of the unfrequented portions of the eastern province, to which
Europeans rarely resort, and where the pea-fowl are unmolested by the
natives, their number is so extraordinary that, regarded as game, it
ceases to be a "sport" to destroy them; and their cries at early morning
are so tumultuous and incessant as to banish sleep, and amount to an
actual inconvenience. Their flesh is excel