hole
ornithological world might be ransacked without finding a greater oddity
than the _adjutant_.

In the first place, it stands six feet upon its long, straight shanks;
though its actual length, measuring from the tip of its bill to the
termination of its claws, is full seven and a half. The beak, of
itself, is over a foot in length, several inches in thickness, with a
gibbous enlargement near the middle, and having both mandibles slightly
curved downwards.

The spread of a full-grown adjutant's wing is fifteen feet, or five
yards, from tip to tip--quite equalling in extent either that of the
Chilian condor or the "wandering" albatross.

In colour the adjutant may be described as black above and white
underneath, neither [that] being very pure. The upper plumage is a
dirty brownish black; while the belly and under parts present a dull
white appearance,--partly from an admixture of greyish feathers, but
also from the circumstance that the bird is usually bedaubed with dirt--
as mud from the marshes, where it feeds, and other filth, in which it
seems to take delight. But for this foulness, the legs of the adjutant
would be of a dark colour; but in the living bird they are never seen of
the natural hue--being always whitened by the dust shaken out of its
plumage, and other excrement that attaches itself to the skin.

The tail is black above and white underneath--more especially the under
coverts, which are of a pure white. These last are the plumes so highly
prized under the name of "marabout feathers," an erroneous title,
arising through a mistake--made by the naturalist Temminck in comparing
the Indian adjutant with another and very different species of the same
genus--the marabout stork of Africa.

One of the distinctive characteristics of the adjutant, or "argala," as
it is better known to the Indians,--and one, too, of its ugliest
"features,"--is a naked neck of a flesh-red colour the skin shrivelled,
corrugated, and covered with brownish hairs. These "bristles" are more
thickly set in young birds, but become thinner with age, until they
almost totally disappear--leaving both head and neck quite naked.

This peculiarity causes a resemblance between the adjutant bird and the
vultures; but indeed there are many other points of similarity; and the
stork may in all respects be regarded as a vulture--the vulture of the
_grallatores_, or waders.

In addition to the naked neck, the adjutant is furnished with a