Mr. E. Blyth on the Calcutta ' Adjutant,' 269 



form of a pouch." Now tlie whole of what I have put into italics 

 is utterly untrue, as I scarcely need inform the readers of 

 'The Ibis/ Next, the row between the 'Adjutant' and the 

 Crows, mentioned in the second column of p. 40, was (I have 

 not the slightest doubt, from personal observation of a similar 

 affray) the result of "the raw-headed old Adjutant'' having 

 seized and gulped some unlucky juvenile member of the Crow 

 community. Generally speaking, when an 'Adjutant' com- 

 mits a misdemeanour of the kind, he carries his victim to the 

 nearest tank, and soaks it thoroughly before engulfing it. But 

 this, it would seem, did not happen in the instance witnessed 

 by the author of the narrative in ' Chambers's Journal.' We are 

 told that " the impertinent Crows had by far the best of this 

 recluse. They attacked him principally about the head, which 

 has at all times a bare and sore appearance. At last, driven to 

 desperation, the Adjutant, by a manoeuvre, possibly more by 

 accident than good management, succeeded in seizing one of his 

 foes with his large and powerful bill. The hour of that bird's 

 dissolution had arrived, and he was not to die as other Crows 

 have died from time immemorial ! There were two or three 

 efforts made on the part of the Adjutant, and, in a moment 

 more, the Crow, body and limbs, was in the sienna-toned 'pouch of 

 the greater avenger. He who writes it saw it done." Now 

 there happens to be no connexion whatever between the pouch 

 and the gullet ! The former is connected with the respiratory 

 system of the bird, and analogous (in my opinion) to the air- 

 bag attached to one being only — a Python or Boa, and, as in that 

 case, no doubt, supplies oxygen to the lungs during protracted 

 acts of deglutition. In the smaller Indian Adjutant [L.javanicus) 

 there is no pouch ; but the latter is not (in its wild state at least) 

 a feeder on garbage of all kinds, but subsists mainly on small 

 aquatic animals, never venturing about human habitations like 

 its big congener. About what is said of the size and plumage 

 of the Calcutta Adjutant, the fact is simply this, that the males 

 are larger than the females, and the grey birds with broad al- 

 bescent wing-bands are the adults of either sex in nearly moulted 

 plumage. 



" The Adjutant's cry very much resembles water flowing from 



