PROCEEDINGS 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. 
ss 
January 14, 1851. 
Prof. Owen, F.R.S., Vice President, in the Chair. 
The following papers were read :-— 
1. ON A NEW AND MOST REMARKABLE FORM IN ORNITHOLOGY. 
: By Joun Govuxp, F.R.S. Etc. 
(Aves, Pl. XXXV.) 
I haye the pleasure of introducing to the notice of the Society on 
the present occasion the most extraordinary bird I have seen for many 
years, and which forms part of a collection made on the banks of the 
upper part of the White Nile, by Mansfield Parkyns, Esq., of Not- 
tingham. For this bird I propose the generic name of BALENI- 
cEps, with the following characters :-— 
Bill enormously robust, equal in breadth and depth; sides of the 
upper mandible much swollen; culmen slightly elevated, depressed 
in the middle of its length, and terminating at the point in a very 
powerful hook ; tomize sharp, turning inwards and very convex ; 
lower mandible very powerful, with a sharp concave cutting edge and 
a truncated tip; nostrils scarcely perceptible, and placed in a narrow 
slit at the base of the bill, close to the culmen; orbits denuded ; 
head very large; occiput slightly crested; wings very powerful, the 
third, fourth and fifth feathers the longest ; tail of moderate length 
and square in form; plumage soft and yielding ; skin of the throat 
loose, and capable of dilatation mto an extensive pouch ; tibize and 
tarsi lengthened, the latter a fourth shorter than the former; the 
lower third of the tibize denuded; toes four in number, all extremely 
long, and without the slightest vestige of interdigital membrane ; 
hind-toe on the same plane as the anterior ones and directed inwards ; 
tibice and tarsi reticulated, the reticulations becoming much smaller 
No. CCXIX.—Proceepincs or THE ZooLoeicaL Society. 
