NATATORES. 497 



The late Mr. Elsey, speaking of the birds observed by 

 him near the Victoria, says, " The Plotiis is common here, 

 and excellent eating. During February and March it was 

 incubating. It chooses large trees that hang over the water 

 above or through the mangroves, and in these a number of 

 them build a colony of large, coarse, flattish nests of dead sticks 

 and twigs, which seem, from the quantity of dirt about them 

 and their stained appearance, to be used year after year. Each 

 season they place in the centre a few fresh green leaves, and 

 on these lay three or four white eggs with a very earthy 

 opaque but brittle shell ; the lining membrane is of a blue- 

 grey colour ; they are rather smaller than a hen's eg^. We 

 have enjoyed many fine meals off these eggs, sometimes 

 getting from forty to fifty in a single tree. Both birds sit." 



Much variation exists in the colouring of the sexes ; the 

 female being, I believe, at all times distinguished by her buffy 

 white breast and neck, which parts in the male are black. 

 Young birds for the first and probably for the second year are 

 the same colour as the female. 



The male has an arrow-head-shaped mark of white on the 

 throat ; a broad stripe of the same colour commences at the 

 base of the mandibles, extends for about four inches down 

 the sides of the neck, and terminates in a point ; head, neck, 

 and all the upper surface of the body greenish black, stained 

 with brown, and with deep rusty red on the centre of the 

 under side of the throat ; under surface deep glossy greenish 

 black ; wings and tail shining black ; all the coverts with a 

 broad stripe of dull white occupying nearly the whole of the 

 outer and a part of the inner web, and terminating in a point ; 

 scapularies lanceolate in form, with a similar-shaped mark of 

 white down the centre, and with black shafts, the scapular 

 nearest the body being nearly as large as the secondaries, and 

 with the outer web crimped and the inner web with a broad 

 stripe of dull white close to the stem ; the secondaries nearest 

 the body with a similar white stripe close to the stem on the 



VOL. II. 2 K 



