269 
Mr. E. Blyth on the Calcutta ‘ Adjutant/ 
/sk 
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form of a pouch.” Now the whole of what I have put into italics 
is utterly untrue, as I scarcely need inform the readers of 
‘The Ibis/ Next, the row between the f Adjutant’ and the 
Crows, mentioned in the second column of p. 40, was (I have 
not the slightest doubt, from personal observation of a similar 
affray) the result of “the raw-headed old Adjutant” having 
seized and gulped some unlucky juvenile member of the Crow 
community. Generally speaking, when an ‘ Adjutant’ com¬ 
mits a misdemeanour of the kind, he carries his victim to the 
nearest tank, and soaks it thoroughly before engulfing it. But 
this, it would seem, did not happen in the instance witnessed 
by the author of the narrative in ( Chambers’s Journal/ We are 
told that “ the impertinent Crows had by far the best of this 
recluse. They attacked him principally about the head, which 
has at all times a bare and sore appearance. At last, driven to 
desperation, the Adjutant, by a manoeuvre, possibly more by 
accident than good management, succeeded in seizing one of his 
foes with his large and powerful bill. The hour of that bird’s 
dissolution had arrived, and he was not to die as other Crows 
have died from time immemorial! There were two or three 
efforts made on the part of the Adjutant, and, in a moment 
more, the Crow, body and limbs, was in the sienna-toned pouch of 
the greater avenger. He who writes it saw it done.” Now 
there happens to be no connexion whatever between the pouch 
and the gullet! The former is connected with the respiratory 
system of the bird, and analogous (in my opinion) to the air¬ 
bag attached to one being only—a Python or Boa, and, as in that 
case, no doubt, supplies oxygen to the lungs during protracted 
acts of deglutition. In the smaller Indian Adjutant (L.javanicus) 
there is no pouch ; but the latter is not (in its wild state at least) 
a feeder on garbage of all kinds, but subsists mainly on small 
aquatic animals, never venturing about human habitations like 
its big congener. About what is said of the size and plumage 
of the Calcutta Adjutant, the fact is simply this, that the males 
are larger than the females, and the grey birds with broad al¬ 
bescent wing-bands are the adults of either sex in nearly moulted 
plumage. 
“ The Adjutant’s cry very much resembles water flowing from 
y- 
ffyify fj 
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