498 IBIS FALCLNELLUS. 



exclusive taste for fresh-water shell-fish as the White Ibis ; 

 and this was afterwards demonstrated to me, since in fact, 

 nothing else was found in the gizzard of more than twenty 

 individuals which I successively opened, only the bird selects 

 shell-fish sufficiently small for the width of its gullet ; for, as 

 all its external forms are slender, and have not so much 

 breadth as those of the White Ibis, its internal organs have 

 been correspondingly contracted. The oesophagus is narrower, 

 the gizzard, although still very muscular, is less thick, the 

 intestines are more slender, the cceca more attenuated; but 

 these slight differences do not prevent the organization and 

 the appetites from being the same in the two species." 



The same author has described this species as feeding 

 chiefly on small univalve fluviatile shells, of the genera 

 planorbis, ampullaria, cyclostoma, and others, which abound 

 in the canals and ditches along the Nile. Its mode of nest- 

 ling has not been ascertained. 



Young. — The young in the second year are thus described 

 by Wagler : — " Closely resembling the adult, with the head 

 and upper part of the neck blackish-brown, with slender 

 longitudinal white streaks ; the lower part of the neck, the 

 breast, belly and tibia? greyish-black (at a more advanced age 

 more or less approaching to chestnut), the upper part of the 

 back and scapulars of a more or less deep and bright chest- 

 nut-brown." The young in the first year, he says, have the 

 head and neck marked with broader and more numerous 

 white streaks, the lower parts of the body verging more 

 toward blackish-grey. 



In a young individual, from Bengal, in my collection, the 

 feathers of the head and neck are very small, oblong, soft, 

 blended, without lustre, but of a dull dark brown colour, each 

 with two marginal slender streaks of white ; the lower parts 

 deep sooty brown, without gloss, excepting the sides ; the 

 upper parts glossy blackish-green with bronze and purple 

 tints ; the primary quills and some of the secondaries deep 

 green. The bill is shorter and more slender than in the adult. 



Remarks. — In this species, the tarsi, which are about 



