Utility to man.—The utility of this bird to mann in clearing away noxious animals and filth has given it a claim to protection, that has rendered it quite at its ease in his presence wherever that protection has been afforded.
C. nigra (A rdea nigra), the Black Stork, Cigogne Noir of the French. Like the last this species is a migratory bird. It passes the winter in the southern parts of Europe, and in spring advances to high northern aitudes to spend the summer. Mr. Jarrell says that he can make out only four authentic instances in which this bird has been shot in England.
M. Temminck remarks that all those gigantic species of foreign Storks arranged by systematists under the name of Mycteria, have the same external characters with the European Storks, the same manners and the same habits, and he further refers to the fact that Illiger in hit Prodrotnua ' has given his opinion that the genera Mycteria and Ciconia ought to be united.
Mr. Selby, after giving the characters of the genus Ciconia, says, "My readers will observe that these generic characters are not applicable to all the species of the genus Ciconia, of Bechstein, Cuvier, Temmiuck, and Wagler, but only to that group of which C. elba may be considered the type. The larger species, namely, C. Marabou, Aryala, Mycleria, &c., seem to me possessed of characters sufficiently distinct to warrant such a separation, a fact indeed admitted by the necessity under which these authors have found themselves of sub dividing their genus into sections." Of these, the three gigantic species of Stork remarkable for the comparative nakedness of the head and neck, a kind of pouch which hangs externally in front of the neck, and a sort of vesicular apparatus or portion of skin at the back of the neck which can be inflated by the bird, and the greater enlargement of the bill, deserve especial notice. These extraordinary and uncouth-looking birds are natives of Africa and the eastern parts of Asia, and have only been known to modern naturalists within the last fifty or sixty years.
Ives in his voyage to India (1773) made known a gigantic grallatorial bird, from which Dr. Latham described the Adjutant of the British residents at Calcutta (the Argala of the natives), with the name of the Gigantic Crane. At the same time he noticed the observations made by Smeathman, the African traveller, on the habits of a bird seen by the latter on the western coast of that quarter of the globe. Gmelin upon this information founded a species, Ardea dubia, and Latham, who had figured the bird, and related some additional particulars of its habits in the first supplement to his 'Synopsis' (1787), changed the name in his 'Index Ornithologicus ' to Aryala. Mr. Bennett, who adverts to these points, proceeds thus : "Mr. Marsden, in his ' History of Sumatra,' makes mention of a bird, called by the natives of that island Boorong-Cambing, or Boorong-Oolar, which was generally believed to be of the same species with the Adjutant of Bengal. Dr. Horsfield however, in a paper published in the 13th
volume of the Linntean Transactions,' separates a Javanese bird, which is probably the same with the Sumatran, as a distinct species. Subsequently 111. Temminck, in his Plauches Colori6es,' has shown that the African species differs in several essential particulars from that of the continent of India, and still more remarkably from that of Java and the neighbouring islands. By his figures of the three species, all taken from living specimens, he has so clearly determined their characters that it is scarcely possible they should ever again be confounded. In one point however he has himself given rise to a different kind of confusion, that of their nomenclature. ' They all furnish, in more or less perfection, the beautiful plumes, superior in estimation even to those of the ostrich, known by the name of Mara bous, from their appellation iu Senegal. But those of the Indian species being far superior to the others, M. Temininek has thought fit to transfer to that bird the name of C. Marabou, and to rob it of its native appellation, Argala, which he has bestowed upon 'the African. The consequence of this perversion of their native names has been such as might have been expected. In the late edition of his Regne Animal,' M. Cuvier quotes the C. Marabou of Temminck, with the characters of the Indian bird, as a native of Senegal ; while he states the C. Argdla of the same author, to which he attributes the characters of the African species, to be brought from India. Nothing could more strongly evince the necessity of restoring, as Mr. Vigors had previously done, in the Appendix to Major Denham's 'Travels in Africa,' the name of Aryala to the Indian, and that of Marabou to the African species." C. Marabou, :Vigors. M. Temminck has clearly pointed out the differences between this species and the Indian The African Marabou is less in size than the Indian Argala, the latter sometimes reaching six or even seven feet in height, while the former seldom exceeds five feet, even when the neck is elongated. The bill of the Aryala is enlarged in the middle, the culmen of the upper mandible and the edges of the lower form a curved line from the base to the apex ; in the Mara bou the lines are straight and the bill is repilarly conical ; the nostrils of the Indian bird are ovate, those of the African species are oblong. The iris of the for mer approaches to pure white; that of the latter is dull brown. The cervical or sternal pouch often hangs down more than a foot in the Argala ; in the Marabou it is much shorter. The back and wings of the Argala are dull black ; in the Mara bou there is a greenish tinge on the black of the back, with the exception of the larger wing-coverts and the secondaries, which are of a more decided black, edged more or hag broadly and distinctly, ac cording to the age of the individual, with pure white bands.