202 
TEAVELS IN CENTEAL AFEICA. 
and taking charge of the horses_, made him strip and go after the 
bird_, who was then knee-deep in water and wading slowly outwards. 
Medineh soon got up to him^ when the stork showed fight with his 
beak and unwounded wing. Medineh kept parrying his thrusts 
with a sticky when^ at last_, he seized the bird by the beak and wing 
and marched him to me. Kneeling on the chest of the birdj he 
suffocated him_, and then securing both storks with his scarf^ they 
were placed across ^^Luxor/^ and we returned to the camp. The 
negro porters begged hard for the beaks to decorate their neeks 
with : they called them Realbeng. Dr. Murie thus described the 
birds : 
Colour of head and neck^ bronze-green and black ; upper part 
of back^ belly_, and thighs, white ; lower part of back and tail, of 
the same greenish-black as the head. Primary and secondary 
wing-feathers, white j tertiary anterior half, of same greenish-black, 
with a partial coating of more purple-bronze colour, a rim of white 
running above to the, phatanges. A fiat yellow wattle on upper 
surface of beak three and a quarter inches long and two inches 
wide, with two small pear-shaped wattles, of the same bright 
colour, hanging from below j the anterior half of neck, bright 
scarlet ; then a quarter length of black, forming a circle or belt ; 
and nearer the head — the last quarter — again bright scarlet. 
Eyes of male and female different in colour j viz., of female : 
iris bright yellow with black pupil, the latter five-eighths, the former 
three-eighths, of an inch in diameter (marginal) . Eyes of male : 
smaller iris yellowish-brown, and large black pupil. 
Measurements , — Height of body when standing, three feet four 
inches ; to crown of head, four feet ten inches ; breadth from tip to 
tip of wings, seven feet one inch ; length of beak, one foot ; point 
of beak to occiput, one foot four and a half inches ; length of legs. 
