Hornbill prints

Elliot’s monograph of the hornbills was the first book devoted to the whole family, and its pictures are the work of two Dutch artists who made their careers in England. Johannes Gerardus Keulemans, born in Rotterdam, drew the coloured plates, closely enough to show the eyelashes and the ridges on the casque; Joseph Smit, from Lisse, drew the uncoloured ones. The birds come from Africa, India, South-east Asia, the Philippines, Celebes and New Guinea, from the ground hornbills to the small red-billed and yellow-billed hornbills of the African bush. Plate 44 was never drawn, as no specimen of the bird could be obtained.

The sheets are smaller than those of Daniel Giraud Elliot’s other monographs, which suits a group of several on one wall. Start with the Rhinoceros Hornbill, the Helmeted Hornbill or the Celebes Hornbill on Family of the Hornbills, and read in What is Elliot’s Family of the Hornbills? how the female walls herself into the nest.