BLACK COEMORANT. 
being placed quite close together, while others were isolated, but sorry to 
relate, there was ample evidence of where the ‘ headhunters ’ had decapitated 
the young birds in previous years, accounting for the extreme wariness 
of the old birds that we saw ; there were also plenty of egg shells about, 
where the hunters had smashed them up in the nest and on the ground. As 
these birds and the other members of the family eat quantities of 
crustaceans, small crab, etc., besides a few fish, now that the fishermen 
have killed out these birds to a minimum they are being rewarded for their 
trouble by a terrible increase of small crabs in the Coorong waters, to the 
extent that when they set their nets, instead of fish, they now get them 
full of these crabs which eat the strands, and also eat any fish that get 
meshed, and of course the crabs eat up the spawn of the fish so that fish 
are now scarce, just a natural consequence of carelessly interfering with 
Nature.” 
The bird figured and described is a male collected at Gracemere, 
Queensland, on the 9th of March, 1881, and is the type of P. c. gmcemeri. 
As already indicated, the treatment of this group in the Catalogue of the 
Birds in the British Museum, Vol. XXVI., 1898, was, as regards generic 
forms, retrogressive in the extreme, so as regards species and subspecies 
it was not only unprogressive but unintelligible with respect to this 
species. 
On p. 340 Phalacrocorax carho is catalogued, and on p. 347 its range 
is given as “ The Atlantic coast of North America from Hudson’s Bay to 
Georgia ; South Greenland, Iceland, Faroes, thence across Europe and Asia 
to Kamtschatka ; southwards to the Cape of Good Hope and from the 
Mediterranean to the Malay Peninsula, Australia, New Zealand, and Chatham 
Islands.” 
On p. 350 Phalacrocorax filamentosus is admitted, the range reading : 
“ The coast of North-east Asia, from East Siberia to Amoy, S. China ; Japan.” 
This suggests at once that two very distinct species are here noted, 
and Ogilvie-Grant remarks: “This species is most nearly allied to P.ycarho, 
but may be distinguished at all ages by the shape of the bare space on the 
throat ; in the present species the feathering extends forward beyond 
a line drawn at right angles to the commissure of the gape, while in 
P. carho the feathering does not extend nearly to this line (see figs. 1 and 2, 
p. 340).” 
Why such an extraordinarily variable feature as the neck feathering in 
this species was taken into account I am unable to imagine, as the specimens 
catalogued by Ogilvie-Grant under P. carho have commonly the form figured 
for P. filamentosus. 
167 
