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family ; it is in every respect a Night Heron gifted with a very sin- 
gular beak. The plumage, the feet and their serrated middle claws, 
and further the colour, manifest the affinity. Even in the bill, ano- 
malous as at first sight it may appear, a minute examination will 
enable us to recognise the beak of a stout-billed Night Heron (A. vio- 
lacea, for instance), strongly modified, it is true, in shape, but still 
exhibiting many of the essential characters. To the beak of the Bale- 
niceps, on the contrary, it seems to afford only an analogy (and not even 
a very strong one), but no true affinity. Its flattened form, and the 
slender and pliable branches of the lower jaw, prove, in my opinion, 
that the beak of the Boatbill is calculated to be rather a very capa- 
cious than a very strong one ; whilst the bill of the Baleniceps, being 
higher than broad, evinces an extraordinary strength in almost every 
feature, but especially in the powerful hook, in which the culmen 
terminates. In the Boatbill there is no such hook, but the upper 
mandible is provided with the usual notched tip of the Night Herons, 
not separated from the sides of the bill by a well-marked groove, as 
is the hook of its presumed kindred; and if we carry on the com- 
parison further, we shall find that the lower jaw does not offer the 
truncated apex, characterizing this part in the Baleniceps, and being 
indeed the consequence of the shape of the hook. The different 
form of the nostrils and the different size and extent of the nasal 
groove afford other notable points of diversity between the two 
birds ; and though the skin of the throat may be dilatable in a certain 
degree in the living Baleniceps, I should not think that this bird 
possesses a true pouch like that of the Cancroma. At all events the 
fact of the mentum being very thick-feathered throughout two-thirds 
of its length induces me to doubt it; and the stout and apparently 
little pliable under-jaw seems also to make it not very probable. 
It must be conceded, that the Baleniceps approaches much to the 
Cancroma in the general structure of the feet; but it has not, like 
this bird, a pectinated middle claw ; and this circumstance affords, 
in my opinion, a strong warning not to class it with the Boatbill, as 
this peculiar serrature never fails in any member of the Heron tribe. 
As to what relates to the nature of the plumage, the Baleniceps 
differs also in not unimportant points from the Cancroma, the downy 
part of each feather being proportionally larger, and genuine down 
being intermixed in considerable quantity among the feathers, as in 
Leptoptilos, while in the Cancroma and the Herons there is hardly 
any down at all amongst them: moreover the hyporhachis is well 
developed in the last, but very small in the Baleniceps, which also 
in this point seems to adhere to the Storks, in certain species of which 
itis even entirely wanting. The distribution of the feathers on the 
body (the pterylose) cannot be accurately studied on a stuffed skin ; 
therefore 1 am not able to give any sufficient account of it in the 
Baleniceps; but even now I think I may say, that the pterylose 
of this bird, when minutely examined, will probably show notable 
differences from that of the Boatbill. It especially appears that the 
neck is feathered nearly all over, while in the Boatbill and the 
whole Heron-tribe there are large apteria on this part. <A point of 
