Captain Stanley S. Flower,



196



Boatbill Cancro? 7 ia. Prof. J. Reinhardt, of Copenhagen, in 1S60

(P.Z.S., p. 377) pointed out the affinity of the Shoebill to the

equally African Unibre Scopus. Mr. F. E. Beddard in 1888

(P.Z.S., p 284) wrote a very useful paper, which should be care¬

fully read by all interested in the subject, on the affinities of this

bird, which he regarded “as a most aberrant Heron, having no

near affinities to the Storks nor to Scopus .”


Dr. Bowdler Sharpe in Volume XXVI. of the British

Museum Catalogue of Birds, and in his latest Handlist of Birds,

places the Shoebill the sole representative of the family Balaeni-

cipitidcie, between the Herons Ardeidae on the one hand, and the

U?nbre Scopidae and the Storks Ciconiidae on the other.


Personally I provisionally consider the Shoebill an aberrant

Heron, which in bygone ages, from what cause we know not,

having deviated from the ancestors of the modern Herons, Night

Herons and Egrets, has continued to develop on a line of its own

till it has reached its present extraordinary form. I11 the marshes

where it exists the peculiar conditions of the country allow of its

continuance, but it is easy to imagine how a geologically small

elevation of the earth’s surface and consequent drainage of the

marshes would quickly cause the extinction of the species, now

too specialized to be able to adapt itself to changed conditions of

life.


However the anatomy and development of the Shoebill is

still not fully known, and I would be sorry to make a definite

statement of its affinities and systematic position without con¬

sulting, which I have not had the opportunity of doing, Mr.

W. P. Pycraft who, in the last few years, has done so much to

place ornithology on a more scientific basis.


Mr. A. E. Butler in his excellent paper on the Ornithology

of the Egyptian Sudan (Ibis, July 1905, pp. 30T-403) gives far the

best account of the Shoebill yet published, and mentions a

specimen with “ distinct, but irregular and not very deep, pec¬

tinations on the middle claws,” and thus concludes :—“ In its

solitary nature, its motionless watching for its prey, and the

nature of its food, as in the colour of its plumage and the pre¬

sence of ‘ powder-down ’ patches, Balaeniceps is a Heron, though

an aberrant one, and seems to have little affinity with the Storks.”



