STORKS AND HERONS 
five feet high; it has “a gaunt grey figure,” with curly 
tufts of feathers on its head ; it is characterized by “ the 
scowling expression of its eyes,” and by the bill to which 
we have referred. Captain Flower observed that it was 
like a heron in its motionless attitude, its solitariness, 
and in that when flying it suggested very much the large 
Goliath heron (Ardea goliath). Baleniceps frequents 
morasses, and spears fishes and water serpents. It does 
not seem to possess much in the way of a voice, but 
snaps its bill as do storks. It nests either on the ground 
or on low bushes near its haunts. Sir Harry Johnston, 
after allowing one or two specimens to be procured for 
the British Museum, at once put the bird on the Pro- 
tected List ; so that this extraordinary creature, doubt- 
less a relic of the past, has a future before it. When it 
was first described so long ago as 1851, by the late John 
Gould, the historian of the Birds of Australia, it was 
recorded by him as a variety of the pelican type, prob- 
ably on account of its bill. But this bill is really very 
like that of the South American Cancroma, or boat-bill 
(of which specimens are generally to be seen at the Zoo), 
a most undoubted heron. There is, in fact, not the 
shadow of a doubt that it is either a heron or a stork ; 
but the question is, which? The same uncertainty of 
characters attaches to this bird as to Scopus, dealt with 
on another page. The late Mr. A. D. Bartlett, that 
excellent observer of birds, and superintendent of the 
Society’s Gardens, discovered a very significant fact 
about the Baleniceps, which seemed at the time to 
settle its place in the bird world. He found that it does 
not possess those tufts of curious feathers which are 
bunched in masses, and from which a powder is con- 
tinually given off owing to the constant breaking off of 
their tips, the “ powder down patches’ as they are 
termed. These modified feathers occur among many 
groups of birds, especially the herons, where it has been 
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