746 Marvels of the Universe 
contortions made during the process of getting the egg into its mouth and then pushing it down 
into the gullet, the snake does not have by any means an easy time of it while feeding, and its 
dinner, one would think, is not an event to be looked for with pleasure. However, after the 
snake has, so to speak, drawn or pushed itself over the egg like a glove, the latter at length 
From a photograph) [Kindly lent by Herr Carl Hagenbeck. 
THE WHALE-HEADED STORK. 
This strange bird, which has affinities with the Storks and Herons, 
is most nearly allied to the Tufted Umbre of Tropical Africa. It is 
called by the Arabs “‘“The Shoe-beak,’’ or “Father of a Shoe,’’ from 
the shape of the broad beak, and is found on the Upper Nile, the 
Victoria Nyanza, and the Upper Congo. 
glides slowly into the upper part of the 
gullet of its devourer. 
Most animals, even if they did not 
choke right away, would be able to do 
nothing with such a hard and big object 
as a hen’s egg jammed tightly in their 
throats, the walls of which have no strong 
compressive power. The snake has, how 
ever, a special mechanical arrangement for 
overcoming the difficulty. This is brought 
about by the spine-like projections from 
the under-surface of the vertebre of the 
neck, which are ordinarily embedded in 
the muscles, being elongated to such an 
extent that their tips project into the 
gullet. Nor is this all, for the projecting 
tips are capped with a hard, enamel-like 
substance, so that they form a kind of 
saw which rips and crushes the shell of 
the egg in its passage down the gullet, 
thus allowing the contents to be swallowed 
without the loss of a drop. As the egg 
breaks up and collapses, the throat of 
the snake suddenly resumes its normal 
calibre. 
It may be added that a closely similar 
structural peculiarity characterizes a 
certain Indian snake which belongs to a 
totally different group of the Ophidian 
order ; and if there is anything in analogy, 
it may be inferred that this snake is like- 
wise an egg-eater, although this requires 
to be verified by actual observation. 
THE WHALE-HEADED STORK 
BY SIR HARRY JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G. 
Tuts strange-looking monster was _ first 
revealed to us in the forties of the nine- 
teenth century, when such bold pioneers 
as the late John Petherick set themselves 
to explore the Upper Nile, and, above all, 
that region of interminable marsh known 
as the Bahr-al-Ghazal. The Whale- 
headed Stork may have been known to 
