The Adjutant Stork. 
31 
In a cou[)le of days I turned them loose into a large 
(33ft. \ 15ft. I airy and lofty shed, which is well ventilated, with 
lar.ye windows along" its 35ft. front, which faces S.W. Here 
they have done well and are ^lowly l)as^ing from juvenile to 
adult pluuiage. 
Their bill of fare has presented no trotible up to the 
l)resent. They consume about 15 lbs. of fish and 5 to 7 lbs. of 
meat offal weekly. They are fully as mirth provoking and 
grotesque as Mr. Dewar so graphically describes them in the 
notes I have quoted as an introduction. 
Being still juvenile, tliough full grown, they do not, as 
yet, indulge to the full in the mirtli-pro\ oking " cake-walks " 
and displays of adult birds, but their rapid transition from 
gravity to the ridiculotis is comic in the extreme. At one 
moment stalking with grave dignity up and down the shed 
and the next indulging in the most absurd of " goose-steps " 
that one explodes into unrestrained laughter on witnessing it, 
but when I)ills, head, neck, wings and legs (3ft. long) are all 
going at once in the wildest and most absurd prancing or 
dancing, the sight is too funny for words. 
Their neck-pouches are as yet oidy partially developed, 
little more than indicated as yet, and I have not, up to the 
present, witnessed any attempt on their part to inflate them. I 
have, however, seen them on several occasions disgorge a fresh 
herring or sprat after having swallowed it, leave it on the 
ground for five minutes or so, and then swallow and retain it. 
One of them is already tame enough to take a fresh herriitg from 
the hand, and both will catch fish or meat in their bills most 
adroitly, when thrown to them from a distance or from near at 
hand. Their white neck ruffs are beginifing to show. 
For any one having a small paddock with a small shed 
I knoW' of no more interesting", or out-of-the-way birds to occupy 
it. If not exactly things of beauty, they are certaiidy striking, 
and their deportment and general characteristics supply a fund 
of interest and nfirth at all seasons of the year. Of course, 
when so kept, they must eitlier be pinioned, or the flights of one 
wing cut. 
