496 OUR INDIAN PELICANS. 
Now no one could examine these seven birds in the flesh 
carefully without being convinced that one and all belonged to 
one and the same species; and, accordingly, when we dissected 
them, we found the three first to be males, the four latter to be 
the females. The males were indifferent stages of plumage, 
and so also were the females; but these differences were not 
so great as to prevent our readily connecting the specimens 
one with the other. I took most careful measurements and 
description of the color of the soft parts, legs, and feet of these 
as I had previously done of specimens obtained elsewhere ; 
and though Iam by no means prepared to explain all the 
changes that take place, I think I now understand some of 
them at any rate. 
I will first deal with the females, which I take to be the 
birds described as 7avanicus by Horsfield, minor by Riippell, 
and probably mératus by Lichtenstein. The following are the 
dimensions in the flesh taken of several specimens obtained in 
Etawah and in Sindh :— 
Length, 57 to 61; expanse,104 to 110; tail from vent, 8 
to 85; wing, 24 to 25:5; tarsus, 49 to 5:5; bill at 
front, including nail, 125 to 13; greatest width of upper 
mandible about one-third from the point, 1:6 to 18; mid 
toe and claw, 5:5 to 5-7; weight, 16 to 18tbs. 
In specimens killed in the middle of January the legs and 
feet were creamy yellow or creamy fleshy ; the tarsal joints and 
webs pale or buffy yellow ; the claws orange, with a black patch 
at the base of each ; the pouch in some bright-yellow, in some a 
pale turmeric yellow; the face and cheeks are purplish- 
pink, or in others pinkish-purple; the irides bright or 
deep red; the culmen, the basal one-fourth of the sides of 
the upper mandible and basal one half of sides of lower mandi- 
_ ble, lavender; the nail and the edges of both mandibles bright 
red ; the rest of upper and lower mandible yellow, pale yellow, 
or orange yellow, as the case may be, with a more or less distinct 
row of ill-defined crimson blotches on the terminal half of 
the upper mandible, more or less connected with its red 
margin. In a somewhat earlier stage the colors are duller, 
and the portions of the upper mandible lying between the 
culmen and the margins exhibit here and there a horny green- 
ish shade; the upper mandible is often rough and scaly, as 
if of multitudinous laminz, which were everywhere peeling off 
in small pieces, and when this is the case, which it chiefly is in 
the mid-winter birds, whitish patches, due to refraction from 
the separating lamin, greatly obscure and deaden the tints, 
and the terminal portions of the upper mandibles on either 
side of the culmen are not unfrequently a strange medley 
of red, pink, greenish-brown and white. At a later season 
