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Bubas bison, thoracic projection of. Bubalus caffer, use of horns. Bucephalus capensis, difference of the sexes of, in colour. Buceros, nidification and incubation of. Buceros bicornis, sexual differences in the colouring of the casque, beak, and mouth in. Buceros corrugatus, sexual differences in the beak of.
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. Birds, E.I. Comp. 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.
In Buceros corrugatus, the whole beak and immense casque are coloured more conspicuously in the male than in the female; and "the oblique grooves upon the sides of the lower mandible are peculiar to the male sex." The head, again, often supports fleshy appendages, filaments, and solid protuberances. These, if not common to both sexes, are always confined to the males.
Six different kinds of woodpeckers and four kingfishers were found here, the fine hornbill, Buceros lunatus, more than four feet long, and the pretty little lorikeet, Loriculus pusillus, scarcely more than as many inches.
Are we to suppose that these black marks and the crimson colour of the eyes have been preserved or augmented through sexual selection in the males? This is very doubtful; for Mr. Bartlett shewed me in the Zoological Gardens that the inside of the mouth of this Buceros is black in the male and flesh-coloured in the female; and their external appearance or beauty would not be thus affected.
I had sent my hunters to shoot, and while I was at breakfast they returned, bringing me a fine large male of the Buceros bicornis, which one of them assured me he had shot while feeding the female, which was shut up in a hole in a tree. I had often read of this curious habit, and immediately returned to the place, accompanied by several of the natives.
"It is a magnificent hornbill!" exclaimed our uncle "Buceros bicornis." Merlin had killed the bird in bringing it on shore, and it now lay stretched out before us. My uncle eagerly went forward to the tree, and looking up about fifteen feet from the ground, we saw a small hole surrounded by mud.
But what are we to conclude with respect to certain birds in which, for instance, the eyes differ slightly in colour in the two sexes? In the Buceros bicornis, the hind margin of the casque and a stripe on the crest of the beak are black in the male, but not so in the female.
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