194



Captain Stanley S. Flower,



a roomy but hook-pointed form of slipper in common use in the

Nile valley. * * *


3. Captivity. As mentioned above, the Zoological Society

of London received two Shoebills in April, i860; one died soon

after its arrival. At the meeting of the Society on the 26th of

June, i860, W. K. Parker read a paper on its Osteology; the

second lived less than one year in London. At the meeting 011

the 26th of March, 1861, A. D. Bartlett referred to “the death of

the survivor of the two birds brought home by Mr. Consul

Petherick.”


Over forty years passed without anyone having the oppor¬

tunity of seeing one of these great birds in captivity; and then,

in the autumn of 1901, the late Col. W. S. Sparkes, C.M.G.,

brought one from the Bahr-el-Ghazal, where he had captured it

by tipping its wing with a rifle shot, alive to Khartoum, where it

is still living in the Governor General’s Palace Garden, and is a

source of great interest to Sir Reginald and Lady Wingate and

their guests.


Early in 1902, the late Lieut. H. L. H. Fell, R.N., who had

been in command of the Gunboat “Abu Klea’’ when we got the

skin of a Shoebill on Lake Ambadi in 1900, and had very kindly

promised to try to get me live specimens, obtained four nestlings

from natives on the Balir-el-Djur, in the Bahr-el-Ghazal province.

“ One unfortunately died of suffocation, caused by a bunch of

threadworms passing up into its throat” (A. L. Butler, Ibis , 1905,

p. 376). Of the survivors Lieut. Fell presented two to the Giza

Zoological Gardens, and one to Maj.-Gen. Sir Rudolph von Slatin

Pasha, K.C.M.G., who was so good as to present his bird also to

the institution under my care.


Mr. A. L. Butler, Superintendent Sudan Game Preservation

Department, brought one of these birds down the White Nile to

Khartoum, and very kindly looked after all three of them in his

house there, till on the 15th of May, 1902, I was ready to leave

Khartoum for Cairo and took the Shoebills into my charge.


Four very good photographs of one of these young Shoe-

bills when in Khartoum, taken by Mr. W. L. S. Loat, at that time

Inspector of Nile Fish, were reproduced in Hutchinson & Co.’s

“Animal Life,” Vol. I., 1902-3, p. 159.



