Miscellaneous. 429 



The Umbrella Bird is about the size of a crow, averaging about 

 18 inches in length. Its colour is entirely black, but varied with 

 metallic blue tints on the outer margin of the feathers. The colour 

 of the iris is greyish white. It is a powerful bird, the bill being very 

 large and strong, the feet short, and the claws acute. 



Were it not for its crest and neck plume, it would appear to an 

 ordinary observer nothing more than a short-legged crow. 



The crest is perhaps the most fully developed and beautiful of 

 any bird known. It is composed of long slender feathers, rising 

 from a contractile skin on the top of the head. The shafts are white 

 and the plume glossy blue, hair-like, and curved outward at the tip. 

 Wlien the crest is laid back the shafts form a compact white mass, 

 sloping up from the top of the head, and surmounted by the dense 

 hairy plumes. Even in this position it is not an inelegant crest, but 

 it is when it is fully opened that its peculiar character is developed. 

 The shafts then radiate on all sides from the tip of the head, reach- 

 ing in front beyond and below the top of the beak, which is com- 

 pletely hid from view. The top then forms a perfect, slightly 

 elongated dome, of a beautiful shining blue colour, having a point of 

 divergence rather behind the centre, like that in the human head. 

 The length of this dome from front to back is about 5 inches, the 

 breadth 4 to 4^ inches. The other singular appendage of this bird 

 is the neck plume. This is a long cylindrical plume of feathers de- 

 pending from the middle of the neck, and either carried close to the 

 breast or puffed out and hanging down in front. The feathers lap 

 over each other, scale-like, and ar*; bordered with fine metallic blue. 



On examining the structure of this plume, it is found not to be 

 composed of feathers only, growing from the neck, as seems to have 

 been hitherto supposed. The skin of the neck is very loose ; looser 

 and larger, in fact, than in any bird I know of. From the lower 

 part grows a cylindrical fleshy process about as thick as a goose- 

 quill and an inch and a half long. From this grow the feathers to 

 the very point, thus producing the beautiful cylindrical plume quite 

 detached from the breast, and forming an ornament as unique and 

 elegant as the crest itself. 



WTien in motion, either flying or feeding, the crest is laid back 

 and the plume carried close to the breast, so as not to be conspicuous. 

 When at rest in the daytime, the crest is fully expanded, and the 

 plume is rather enlarged and hanging forward. At night, when 

 asleep, all the feathers are puffed out to their fullest extent, and some- 

 times the head is turned so as to bring the dome of the crest on the 

 middle of the back. It then presents a most singular appearance, 

 the head and feet being quite invisible, the plume and crest alone 

 being conspicuous amidst the mass of feathers. 



These observations I was enabled to make by having a fine male 

 alive for ten days. He had received a shot in the head, but ap- 

 peared to suffer no ill effects from it, till on the tenth day he suddenly 

 fell off his perch and died. I found, on skinning him, that the shot 

 had broken his skull and entered the brain. 



The Umbrella Bird inhabits the islands of the rivers, never having 



