20 A MALAYAN ORNITHOLOGY. 



it passed near one of our party, he brought it down. Length 

 about 30 inches ; beak and gullet pale bluish-white ; feet webbed and 

 of a dull fleshy-white ; head, neck, and throat white, mottled 

 with umber-brown, becoming dark brown on the breast and back ; 

 belly pure white ; wings and tail black, tinged with green ; wing- 

 coverts brown, the feathers having whitish margins ; middle claw 

 pectinated. The bird had a very rank fishy smell. 



Oraculus carbo (Linn.). The Common Cormorant. 



On 29th May, 1877, while returning down stream to Kuala 

 Kangsa, after a few days' shooting on the upper reaches of the 

 Perak river, I shot what I believed to be a specimen of the Com- 

 mon Cormorant. 



In my notes I have written : — 



" Soon after daylight, as we were drifting with the stream past 

 the village of Enggar, loud exclamations from my Malay boat- 

 men drew my attention to two large birds which were walking 

 about side by side on the sandbank in the middle of the river. 

 Steering within shot, I fired from beneath the attap roof cover- 

 ing the canoe and killed one of them, and, wading to the bank, 

 found I had got a fine Cormorant, the first I have seen in this 

 part of the country. It was not quite dead when I reached it, and 

 whilst flapping about on the sand disgorged four or five small 

 fishes. It was a female, length 34 inches, tarsus 2J, middle toe 

 with claw 3J ; irides pale green ; beak at front 2 T 7 ^, in colour dirty 

 white, black on the ridge ; gular pouch bright yellow ; head, back 

 of neck, wings, back, and tail rich bronze slightly tinged with 

 ^reen, and having the feathers of the upper part of the back, 

 also the scapulars and the wing-coverts, edged with black ; lower 

 back and sides of abdomen uniform dark greenish-bronze colour ; 

 face, front of neck, breast, and middle of the abdomen white, 

 much mottled and streaked with brow r nish-black. 



Plotus melanogaster (Gin.). The Indian Snake-bird. 



I got one of these curious birds, looking like a cross between 

 a Heron and a Cormorant, at Malacca; it was shot in April, out 

 of a party of ten or fifteen, on some pools at Kessang, a marshy 

 district in the neighbourhood of the settlement. The local bird- 

 collectors did not seem to be familiar with it ; so probably it is 



