296 



VEETEBRATES. 



raged by the Dutch to build in their towns. Among the ruins of 

 J*ersepolis they are very common, scarcely one pillar being without 

 a stork's nest at the summit. In Holland a kind of false chimney 

 is built by the inhabitants for these birds to make their nests in. 

 When the Stork cannot find a building on which to make its nest, 

 it chooses the flat spreading branches of a cedar orpine, ani there 

 collects a large mass of sticks and twigs, on which it lajs from 

 three to five whitish eggs. When disturbed, the birds make a 

 great clattering with their bills. The draining of the morasses 

 seems to have driven the Stork completely out of England, where 

 it was formerly tolerably common. The food of this bird consists 

 of rats, mice, frogs, etc. 



The Adjutant. — This very remarkable bird is a native of 

 various parts of India, and must not be confounded with the 



Marabou, which belongs to the same 

 genus, but lives in the African 

 tropics. 



15. The Adjutant is one of the 

 largest birds in the world, standing 

 five feet in height, and measuring 

 seven feet and a half from the tip 

 of the bill to the claws,v while its 

 expanse of wing is rather above 

 fourteen feet. On the front of the 

 breast there hangs a pouch of skin, 

 into which the bird sometimes ap- 

 pears to withdraw its neck altogether, 

 looking on such occasions as if it 

 had no neck at all. Its bill, as will be seen from the cut, is eni,r. 

 mously large, and capable of receiving prey of considerable 

 magnitude, inasmuch as in the crop of one of these birds were 

 found a land tortoise, ten inches in length, and a large male black 

 cat, which the Adjutant had snapped up entire. It has also been 

 known to swallow entire a small leg of mutton, a hare, and a small 

 fox, so that there is no reason to complain that it does not make 

 use of the " terrors of its beak."^ But its beak only affords teiror 



The Adjutant 



