Note 1 — CHAP. II.
Reading edition
: 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.
2: Brachypternus aurantius, Linn.
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.
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.
5: Itinerarius FRATRIS ODORICI, de Foro Julii de Portu-vahonis.—HAKLUYT, vol. ii. p. 39.