Shan states subordinate to Burma, but at present beyond the administrative border. Estimated area, 900 sq. m.; estimated pop. 11,000. It lies between 27° and 28° N. and 97° and 98° E., and is bordered by the Mishmi country on the N., by the Patkai range on the W., by the Hukawng valley on the S. and E., and indeed all round by various Chingpaw or Kachin communities. The country is little known. It was visited by T. T. Cooper, the Chinese traveller and political agent at Bhamo, where he was murdered; by General Woodthorpe and Colonel Macgregor in 1884, by Mr Errol Grey in the following year, and by Prince Henry of Orleans in 1895. All of these, however, limited their explorations to the valley of the Mali-hka, the western branch of the Irrawaddy river. Hkamti has shrunk very much from its old size. It was no doubt the northernmost province of the Shan kingdom, founded at Mogaung by Sam Lōng–hpa, the brother of the ruler of Kambawsa, when that empire had reached its greatest extension. The irruption of Kachins or Chingpaw from the north has now completely hemmed the state in. Prince Henry of Orleans described it as “a splendid territory, fertile in soil and abundant in water, where tropical and temperate culture flourish side by side, and the inhabitants are protected on three fronts by mountains.” According to him the Kiutze, the people of the hills between the Irrawaddy and the Salween, call it the kingdom of Moam.
HLOTHHERE, king of Kent, succeeded his brother Ecgberht
in 673, and appears for a time to have reigned jointly with his
nephew Eadric, son of Ecgberht, as a code of laws still extant was
issued under both names. Neither is mentioned in the account of
the invasion of Æthelred in 676. In 685 Eadric, who seems to
have quarrelled with Hlothhere, went into exile and led the
South Saxons against him. Hlothhere was defeated and died of
his wounds.
See Bede, Hist. eccl. (Plummer), iv. 5, 17, 26, v. 24; Saxon Chronicle (Earle and Plummer), s.a. 685; Schmid, Gesetze, pp. 10 sqq.; Thorpe, Ancient Laws, i. 26 sqq.
HOACTZIN, or Hoatzin, a bird of tropical South America,
thought by Buffon to be that indicated by Hernandez or Fernandez
under these names, the Opisthocomus hoazin or O. cristatus
of modern ornithologists—a very curious and remarkable form,
which has long exercised the ingenuity of classifiers. Placed by
Buffon among his “Hoccos” (Curassows), and then by P. L. S.
Müller and J. F. Gmelin in the Linnaean genus Phasianus, some of
its many peculiarities were recognized by J. K. W. Illiger in 1811
as sufficient to establish it as a distinct genus, Opisthocomus; but
various positions were assigned to it by subsequent systematic
authors. L’Herminier was the first to give any account of its
anatomy (Comptes rendus, 1837, v. 433), and from his time our
knowledge of it has been successively increased by Johannes
Müller (Ber. Akad. Wissensch. Berlin, 1841, p. 177), Deville (Rev.
et mag. de zoologie, 1852, p. 217), Gervais (Castelnau, Expéd.
Amérique du Sud, zoologie, anatomie, p. 66), Huxley (Proc. Zool.
Society, 1868, p. 304), Perrin (Trans. Zool. Society, ix. p.
353), and A. H. Garrod (Proc. Zool. Society, 1879, p. 109). After
a minute description of the skeleton of Opisthocomus, with the
especial object of determining its affinities, Huxley declared that
it “resembles the ordinary gallinaceous birds and pigeons more
than it does any others, and that when it diverges from them it is
either sui generis or approaches the Musophagidae.” He accordingly
regarded it as the type and sole member of a group,
named by him Heteromorphae, which sprang from the great
Carinate stem later than the Tinamomorphae, Turnicomorphae,
or Charadriomorphae, but before the Peristeromorphae, Pteroclomorphae
or Alectoromorphae. This conclusion is substantially
the same as that at which A. H. Garrod subsequently arrived
after closely examining and dissecting specimens preserved in
spirit; but the latter has gone further and endeavoured to trace
more particularly the descent of this peculiar form and some
others, remarking that the ancestor of Opisthocomus must have
left the parent stem very shortly before the true Gallinae first
appeared, and at about the same time as the independent pedigree
of the Cuculidae and Musophagidae commenced—these two
groups being, he believed, very closely related, and Opisthocomus
serving to fill the gap between them.
The first thing that strikes the observer of its skeleton is the extraordinary structure of the sternal apparatus, which is wholly unlike that of any other bird known. The keel is only developed on the posterior part of the sternum—the fore part being, as it were, cut away, while the short furcula at its symphysis meets the manubrium, with which it is firmly consolidated by means of a prolonged and straight hypocleidium, and anteriorly ossifies with the coracoids. This unique arrangement seems to be correlated with the enormously capacious crop, which rests upon the furcula and fore part of the sternum, and is also received in a cavity formed on the surface of each of the great pectoral muscles. Furthermore this crop is extremely muscular, so as more to resemble a gizzard, and consists of two portions divided by a partial constriction, after a fashion of which no other example is known among birds. The true gizzard is greatly reduced.
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| Hoactzin. |
The hoactzin appears to be about the size of a small pheasant, but is really a much smaller bird. The beak is strong, curiously denticulated along the margin of the maxilla near the base, and is beset by diverging bristles. The eyes, placed in the middle of a patch of bare skin, are furnished with bristly lashes, resembling those of horn-bills and some few other birds. The head bears a long pendant crest of loose yellowish feathers. The body is olive-coloured, varied with white above, and beneath is of a dull bay. The wings are short and rounded. The tail is long and tipped with yellow. The legs are rather short, the feet stout, the tarsi reticulated, and the toes scutellated; the claws long and slightly curved. According to all who have observed the habits of this bird, it lives in bands on the lower trees and bushes bordering the streams and lagoons, feeding on leaves and various wild fruits, especially, says H. W. Bates (Naturalist on the River Amazons, i. 120), those of a species of Psidium, and it is also credited with eating those of an arum (Caladium arborescens), which grows plentifully in its haunts. “Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss,” continues the same traveller, and “it makes the noise when alarmed, all the individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree, when disturbed by passing canoes.” It exhales a very strong odour—wherefore it is known in British Guiana as the “stink-bird”—compared by Bates to “musk combined with wet hides,” and by Deville to that of a cow-house. The species is said to be polygamous; the nest is built on trees, of sticks placed above one another, and softer materials atop. Therein the hen lays her eggs to the number of three or four, of a dull-yellowish white, somewhat profusely marked with reddish blotches and spots, so as to resemble those of some of the Rallidae (Proc. Zool. Society, 1867, pl. xv. fig. 7. p. 164). The young are covered only with very scanty hair, like down, and have well-developed claws on the first and second fingers of the wing, which they use
