I therefore very reluctantly came away.

About an hour afterwards, much to my surprise, a tremendous loud, hoarse screaming was heard, and the bird was brought me, together with a young one which had been found in the hole.

This was a most curious object, as large as a pigeon, but without a particle of plumage on any part of it.

It was exceedingly plump and soft, and with a semi-transparent skin, so that it looked more like a bag of jelly, with head and feet stuck on, than like a real bird.
The extraordinary habit of the male, in plastering up the female with her egg, and feeding her during the whole time of incubation, and until the young one is fledged, is common to several of the large hornbills, and is one of those strange facts in natural history which are "stranger than fiction.".