40 Mr. W. R. Ogilvie- Grant on the Genus Platalea. 



The characters found in the length of the bill and tarsus 

 and the extent of the bare skin of the throat are subject 

 to considerable individual variation, each of them becoming 

 more pronounced with the increase of age and differing in 

 males and females, the latter being always considerably 

 smaller, and apparently taking longer to assume the fully 

 adult characters. Mr. Hume (' Stray Feathers/ i. 1873, 

 p. 256) says, "the bills in this species [P. major, which he 

 calls P. leucoroclia] vary very materially in length, even in 

 the same sex ; amongst males, for instance, they vary from 

 8*2 to Q-7." The smaller extent of the throat-patch is put 

 forward as being a distinguishing character between the 

 Japanese birds and P. leucoroclia, and certainly specimen 

 No. 11 from Yokohama has a very small area of bare skin 

 on the throat, only 1*4 (measured from the angle of the 

 gape), and the same peculiarity is to be found in specimen 

 No. 8, from Oudh, which, though rather a larger specimen, 

 has the throat-patch only 2 inches long, and shows the same 

 W -shaped form posteriorly ; while, on the other hand. No. 14 

 ( ? , R. Swinhoe, No. 1, Ibis, 1864, p. 364), from Tamsuy, 

 Formosa, and No. 5, ^ adult, Hakodadi, have the skin of the 

 throat rounded off posteriorly, like the rest of the Asiatic 

 and European specimens, and the latter has fully as large an 

 area of naked skin on the throat as any of the European 

 specimens I have seen ; and Nos. 3 and 4, from Jodhpurand 

 Delhi, have even more, the latter especially (4"1). These 

 differences will be at once seen by I'eferring to the table of 

 measurements below. I believe both specimens Nos. 8 and 1 1 

 to be young males, and I do not think, any reliance can be 

 placed on the shape of the termination of the throat-patch, 

 which has been suggested as a character in this group, as it 

 may be either rounded oft' or W-shaped, though usually the 

 former. 



Specimen No. 11 (Yokohama), already referred to, is 

 almost identical with the type of P. major, though the mea- 

 surements of the latter are somewhat larger. 



The specimens referred to by Taczanowski (Bull. Soc. Zool. 

 Fr. X. p. 476) are clearly not very old birds, having probably 



