606 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXir. 



three Eastern White-eyed Pochard {Nyrcca baeri) and one Bronze-capped 

 Teal {Eunetta f alcatel). In my six years" residence here one Baikal Teal, two 

 Eastern White-eyes and one Bronze-capped Teal have been shot previously, 

 and one of the last named has been netted and placed in a tealery. 



J. 0. HIGGINS, i.c.s. 

 Imphal, Manipur State, Assam, 



20iA January 1916. 



No. XXV.— WHAT IS THE LARGEST SPAN OF A BIRD? 



Can any of your readers tell me what is the largest recorded span 

 of a bird ? 



Newton in his "Dictionary of Birds " if my memory serves me right, 

 dismisses as exaggerations statements that albatrosses sometimes have a 

 span of over 20 feet. Their usual span is 10 or 11 feet. Ives, in "A voyage 

 from England to India in the year 1754", p. 5, states that "An albatrose 

 (sic), a sea fowl, was shot off the Cape of Good Hope, which measured 17-J 

 feet from wing to wing." 



Mr. T. J. Spooner, District Engineer, M. and S. M. Railway, tells me that 

 he once shot an adjutant bird having a span that he estimates at 18 feet. 

 He saw the bird standing near some quarries about a mile and a half from 

 Wardhan and noticed that it had a large pouch hanging down from its neck. 

 After shooting it he laid it across the railway embankment near, and found 

 that when stretched across this embankment its wing tips stretched out 

 over the edge by about a foot on each side. The embankment was of a 

 narrow gauge single line and has a prescribed width of 16 feet. I under- 

 stand there was a possibility of the embankment having worn away a liLtle 

 but that the official in charge would have been liable to a fine if the width 

 decreased to 14 feet. 



The usual span of the adjutant is between 9 and J feet. 1 once had in 

 captivity an adjutant of a span of nearly II feet. 



The pelican is stated to have a span reaching to 15 feet. 



I think that if any one shoots a bird of over 15 feet span he would be 

 well advised to send it to a museum as otherwise his statement as to its 

 size would be liable to be met with a certain degree of scepticism. 



Another question on which I should like to have some information is as to 

 what is the greatest height at which birds are able to fly ? 



Knowlton in " Birds of the World " states that the condor usually soars 

 at heights between 9,000 and 15,000 feet. I have observed the black vulture 

 soaring at a height of about 11,000 feet above sea level in Naini Tal. In 

 Agra soaring birds rarely are visible at so great a height as 6,500 

 feet. 



The above questions are of interest for the following reason. Of the 

 fossil flying reptiles known as " pterodactyls " the largest reached a span of 

 about 21 feet. It has recently been stated in a semi-popular scientific maga- 

 zine that the atmosphere of the present day is too tenuous to support flying 

 animals of such large size, and that therefore in cretaceous times when these 

 reptiles were alive, the atmospheric pressure must have been much greater 

 than it is nowadays. This theory appears to me to be quite unwarranted 

 for various reasons. The measurements above given show that there is no 

 such wide difference between the span of existing birds and the span of the 

 "pterodactyls" as was supposed by the author of the theory. At the height 



