than three species of these worthies, forming a natural group of gigantic storks, not only cherished, like the white stork, for their services to man, but valued for the beautiful plumes called 'Marabous,' from the Senegal name of the African species. The extreme lightness of these long downy feathers, which are transferred from the sides beneath the wings and from under the tail of the bird to wave over the brow of beauty, where they float with every breath of air, may be conceived from Latham's experiment. He weighed one of them, which was eleven inches and three-quarters in length and seven in breadth, and balanced only eight grains.

Temminck, in his Planches Coloriées, has well pointed out the difference between the marabou of Africa, the argala of the Asiatic continent, and the insular species -probably the boorong-cambing or boorong-oolar of Marsden-inhabiting Java and the neighbouring islands. The Javanese bird, separated by Dr. Horsfield, is probably identical with the Sumatran species.

Second only to the vultures in the eagerness with which these feathered scavengers turn the most disgusting substances into nutriment, the adjutants and marabous are safe from all annoyance, and stalk about among the dwellings of man, the privileged abaters of all nuisances. Carrion, flesh and bone, everything, in short, that offends the eye and the nose, enters the omnivorous maw of the large throat,' the bone-eater,' 'the bonetaker,' as this voracious utilitarian is in some places termed. Snakes, lizards, frogs, and small quadrupeds and. birds, have small chance of life when they fall in its way; and as the size of the devourer calls for a vast supply, its consumption of both living and dead things is

enormous.

But why should the bird have been called an adjutant? -he looks more like an ancient, methinks.

Very good, sir; but to say nothing of his staid and solemn gait, just behold him afar off. 'I have been told,' says Latham, that the bird has obtained this last name of adjutant from its appearing, when looked on in front at a distance, like a man having a white waistcoat and breeches.'

A lofty percher, and a high flier, so as to give a wide sweep to its ken, in order that it may perceive any incumbrance to the land which it may clear away, the bird is gifted with powerful vision, and appliances to assist in keeping it up in the air. It has a cervical or sternal pouch, more or less developed in each of the species, which depends more than a foot in the argala, but much less in the marabou. This, as well as the skin at the back of the head, can be inflated at the will of the bird; and both, doubtless, assist its buoyancy. From its high roost it looks down, like a freebooter from his tower: and thereby hangs a tale.

Almost every living creature may be made a pet; and Smeathman noticed a marabou which had arrived at such preferment. Roosting high upon the cotton-trees, it would sit motionless, till it descried from a great distance the servants bringing the dishes to the dinnertable. Then, spreading its sail-broad vans, down it came, and took its place behind its master's chair. But it was hard to keep such a portentous piece of voracious machinery as its enormous bill idle in the presence of so many good things; and the servants were armed with switches to prevent it from helping itself. Notwithstanding their vigilance, however, a whole boiled fowl would, every now and then, vanish from the dish, and disappear at a single gulp into the capacious crop of the pet.

The jabirus (Mycteria), of which there are three species -one in Asia, one in South America, and one in Australia-are closely allied to the family of storks, and,

especially, to the gigantic group which I have attempted to sketch.

I cannot learn that any of the storks kept in the Regent's Park have attempted incubation. The marabou stork, indeed, dawdled about, and made a nest, such as it was, one season, but no egg was laid.

March, 1850,

40

A

CHAPTER IV.

FRICA, of all the quarters of the old world, is the country of wonders. Take up a steady-going book of travels, or the Arabian Nights, what region like Africa? Open a volume of natural history, the older the better, and the African marvellous forms throw all the others into shade. Did not the phoenix live there, and make its appearance among the Heliopolitans only once in five hundred years? He came, on the death of his sire, in shape and size like an eagle, with his glorious parti-coloured wings of golden hue set off with red, dutifully bearing from Arabia the body of his father to his burial-place in the temple of the sun, and there piously deposited the paternal corpse in the tomb.

But how did the phoenix carry him to the grave—as the kite carried Cock Robin, I suppose?

No, madam; he brought his revered, deceased parent in this manner. He first formed a large egg of myrrh, and then having by trial ascertained that he could carry it, he hollowed out the artificial egg, put his parent into it, stopped up the hole through which he had introduced the body with more myrrh, so that the weight was the same as the solid egg of myrrh, and performed the funeral in Egypt.*

If you would see the manner of his death, turn to the Portraits d'Oyseaux, Animaux, Serpens, Herbes, Arbres, Hommes et Femmes d'Arabie et Egypte, observez par P. Belon du Mans:† and there you will behold 'Le

* Herodotus, Euterpe.

† Paris, 1557.

Phoenix selon que le vulgaire a costume de le portraire,' on his fiery funeral pile, gazing at a noon-day radiant sun with as good eyes, nose, and mouth, as ever appeared over mine host's door, with the following choice morsel of poetry:

O du phoenix la divine excellence!

Ayant vescu seul sept cens soixante ans,

Il meurt dessus des ramées d'ancens :

Et de sa cendre un autre prend naissance.

It is to be hoped, for the sake of the son, that this is the correct version. The carriage of ashes from Arabia to Egypt, wrapped up in myrrh, is a very different task from the porterage of a dead body thence and thither.

Some, again, declare that the bird never died at all; but that when Age 'clawed him in his clutch,' and he found himself not quite so jaunty as in the vaward of his youth, he collected the choicest perfumed woods of Araby the Blest, waited patiently for fire from heaven to kindle the 'spicy' pile, burnt away what we have heard termed 'his old particles,' and came forth as if he had drunk of the renovating elixir of life.

But what right had the phoenix to such pleasant immortality?

Because he never ate the forbidden fruit.

Moreover, there is a place in Arabia, near the city of Buto, to which Herodotus went on hearing of some winged serpents; and when he arrived there, he saw bones and spines of serpents in such quantities as it would be impossible to describe; there they were in heaps, and of all sizes. Now this place is a narrow pass between two mountains, opening into a spacious plain contiguous to that of Egypt; and it is reported, says he of Halicarnassus, that at the commencement of spring, winged serpents fly from Arabia towards Egypt, but the ibises meet them at the pass, and kill them; for