268 



SAVAGE SUDAN 



exist water-beetles as big as some rabbits I've seen! 

 There are also water-pythons, water-turtles as big as a 

 cart-wheel, and monitor lizards 6 feet long. All these 

 one sees occasionally ; but there is also evidence of things 

 not seen some of them monsters, as testified by great 

 wandering "waves" moving along without a visible cause. 



I find the following 

 A! note in my diary : "It 



!H seems clear that if any 



human amphibian is pre- 

 3\i pared to devote several 



months to the investiga- 

 tion of this ghastly 

 Sudd, the result would 

 probably ensue that the 

 existence of several un- 

 known species of rails, 

 gallinules, porphyries, 

 and marsh - warblers 

 might be revealed to 

 science. Personally I 

 am not on it." 



The great whale- 

 headed stork(Z?a/<znicefls 

 rex] ought not to be 

 passed over in silence, 

 though we saw little or 

 nothing of it, its narrow 

 habitat being on the 

 Bahr-el-Ghazal, a trifle to the west of our hunting-grounds. 1 

 But we did meet here with a new acquaintance of the 

 stork-persuasion, never at this season seen north of the 

 Sudd to wit, " Abdim's stork," a creature with thunder- 

 and-lightning mandibles not unlike a minor jabiru. These 



1 I have, nevertheless, a note of a Balasniceps shot on Lake Kioga, on 

 the Victoria Nile in Uganda, about i^ North latitude. This is about seven 

 or eight degrees south of the normally accepted range of its species. 



WHALE-HEADED STORK (Balaniceps rex). 



[Photo from life. 



