CHAPTER FIFTY SIX.
THE ADJUTANTS.
The brace of gigantic birds, that had thus alighted by the shore of the little lake, were, to say the least, uncouth creatures; for the whole 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.