Marvels of the Universe 747 
the Ancient Egyptians, but it is not 
represented in any of their pictures. 
As it is so essentially a marsh- 
frequenting bird, it is possible that its 
range did not extend northwards into 
Egypt proper, and therefore, unlike 
so many other Nile water-birds made 
famous to us by Egyptian art, it 
never came much under the observa- 
tion of this wonderful Asiatic-African 
people. 
For a long while—in fact, nearly 
sixty years—it was believed that the 
Whale-headed Stork only inhabited 
the region of the Bahr-al-Ghazal and 
the adjoining Mountain Nile. The 
present writer fancied that he saw it in 
a great congeries of water-birds in the 
marshes of the Kunene River in South- 
West Africa, and the late Sir Henry 
Stanley declared repeatedly that he 
had seen this unmistakable bird on the 
Northern Congo. It would really ap- 
THE SUBSTANCE OF AIR. 
A propeller fifteen centimetres in diameter is shown mounted on a 
pear as though both observers may Tentionl! ante fn Grae of a ahicd) candle andl cnationoo, 
havew beent conection firstly, I 
myself discovered the bird to exist in the kingdom of Uganda (from which I sent numerous specimens 
home), and later travellers have obtained it from the north-eastern bend of the Congo, and even 
from as far south as the country of Katanga near the borders of Northern Rhodesia and the 
Upper Zambezi. 
In its structure the Whale-headed Stork offers almost equal affinities with both Storks and 
Herons, and it is difficult to say to which of the two groups it should be more correctly assigned : 
perhaps the Herons have the best claim. But its nearest relation is that equally unplaced stork- 
like bird, the Tufted Umbre, likewise an inhabitant of Tropical Africa and Madagascar, but of far 
more extended range than its monstrous whale-headed relation. The Tufted Umbre, or Hammer- 
head, is quite a small bird, of a uniform umber-brown, but with a rather broad, hooked beak that 
might well have been the originator of the monstrous beak of the Whale-headed Stork. This deve- 
lopment of jaws has been likened by the Egyptian Arabs to a shoe, and the Whale-headed Stork 
is often called in Sudan-Arabic “‘ Father of a Shoe”’; others, again, compare it to the hull of a 
ship, and call the bird Abu markab for this reason. On its outside this beak is not unlike tortoise- 
shell in appearance and colouring. The attitudes of the bird and the carriage of neck and body 
in flight resemble those of the Herons ; its habit of clattering the beak more recalls Storks. The huge 
head is surmounted by a ridiculous little curled crest, and the plumage ranges in general colour 
(according to age, sex and local type) from brownish-grey to bluish-grey, the centres of the feathers 
being generally dark, which gives the plumage a longitudinally striated appearance. It has struck 
me that the Uganda form of the bird is more bluish-grey in plumage than the Whale-headed Stork 
of the Sudan. In fact, in some Uganda types the colour of the plumage was almost beautiful in 
being of sucha delicate ashy blue, with an inclination to greenish iridescence on the browner feathers 
of the wing. The food of this bird seems to consist of fish, frogs, snakes, land and water snails and 
fresh-water bivalves. The nest is made on the ground, though the bird will freely perch on trees. 
