Birds of Celebes: Ibidae. 



805 



Measurements. 



"Wing Tail 



Tarsus 



Mid. toe 

 with claw 



Culmen 



(straight) 



a. (C 5272) ad., Limbotto, Jan. 76 (Mussch.) 248 90 81 73 103 



ft. (C 10986) ad., Tondano, Aug.— Sept. (N.C.) 254 90 81 72 102 



c. (Nr. 2191) ad., Ternate 286 — 102 79 127 



d. (Nr. 11726) ad., Australia 292 



Seven examples from Europe and N. Africa 255-300 — 84 — 108 



Eggs. Elongated ovals as a rule, regularly pointed towards the small end, beautiful uniform 

 blue, scarcely any tinge of green in any; shell very fine and compact (the pores 

 being very inconspicuous), with a slight gloss (Hume 10. See, also, W. E. Clarke 8; 

 Bennett b 7; North d 10; etc.). 



Nest. "The nests were small and mostly made of twigs and grass-roots, almost fiat in shape 

 and placed upon the horizontal forks of small branches high up in the trees" — thorny 

 trees growing in the half-dried bed of a small tank (Ceylon — Legge 5, 10). 



Distribution. America — Eastern portion of the United States; Central and Southern Europe; 

 Africa; Madagascar; Asia — Asia minor, Persia to the Indian countries, the East 

 India Archipelago to New Guinea and Australia. 



In Celebes: N. Peninsula — Minahassa (Nat. Coll.), Gorontalo Dist. (Forsten dl, 

 V. Eosenberg a 2, e 1, d 7, Eiedel f 1, v. Musschenbr.), S. Peninsula — Macassar 

 (S. Miiller d 1], Tete Adji (Weber 11). 



The Glossy Ibis is a dweller in most of the temperate and warm countries 

 of the globe. In South and Central America and the western parts of North 

 America the typical form is represented by two closely allied species, Plegadis 

 guaraima (L.) and P.ridgwayi (Allen), the first dififering by its white face and 

 ranging from the Western United States to the Argentine Republic, the latter, 

 said to have shorter stouter legs and feet and some differences of intensity in 

 colour, inhabiting Peru and Chili (see Ridgway's Manual N. Am. Birds 1887, 

 124). It is probable that Plegadis falcinellus also is not perfectly uniform in its 

 characters throughout its vast range. Bonaparte separated the birds of Java 

 and Celebes as F.peregrinus under the belief that they differed in colour. No 

 proof of this has been found since, but Briiggemann and, later, W. Blasius 

 have held them separate as a subspecies in virtue of their small size. The two 

 Dresden specimens from Celebes are also small, but one from Ternate, which 

 island lies nearly in sight of Celebes, is very large. Before they can be ad- 

 mitted as racially distinct in Celebes and Java, more specimens should be measured. 

 It is also an open question at present whether the species is not simply a winter 

 visitor to these islands. 



In the Minahassa the Glossy Ibis appears to be of rather rare occurrence, 

 but this is clearly not the case at Lake Limbotto, from where there are four 

 or five examples obtained by Forsten in September and October, 1841, and 

 where Rosenberg and his hunters shot 16 specimens in two months in 1863 

 and 1864; he speaks of it as very abundant. In Europe it is only a summer 

 visitor — a straggler to the British Islands, Norway, Denmark, North Germany, 

 Holland, Belgium and Northern France, but breeding plentifully in Hungary, and 



