Ill 



THE INDIAN SNAKE-BIRD 



THE Indian darter, or snake-bird (Plotus 

 melanogaster) is best described by what I 

 may perhaps call the synthetic method. 

 Take a large cormorant and remove the head 

 and neck ; to the headless cormorant, sew on the head 

 and neck of a heron, and you will have produced a very 

 fair imitation of the Indian snake-bird. If during the 

 operation you happen to have dislocated one of the 

 lower neck vertebrae of the heron, so much the better, 

 for the slender neck of the darter is characterised by a 

 bend at the junction of the eighth and ninth vertebrae, 

 which, as Mr. Garrod has shown, enables the bird, by 

 suddenly straightening the neck, to transfix the fish on 

 which it has designs. As a catcher of fish the snake- 

 bird is probably without peer. This is not surprising, 

 since it possesses the swimming and diving apparatus 

 of the cormorant, the long neck and dagger-like beak 

 of the heron, and, in addition, a patent thrusting 

 apparatus in the shape of the aforesaid kink in the neck. 

 The Indian darter is a bird with which all who go 

 down to jhils to shoot duck must be familiar, since it is 

 a full yard in length and occurs in most parts of India, 



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