HERON 419 



forming his third group, require more notice, distinguished as they 

 are by a more slender bill, their pure white plumage, and, when in 

 breeding-dress, by the beautiful dorsal tufts of decomposed feathers 

 that ordinarily droop over the tail, and are in such request as 

 ornaments by eastern 

 magnates and western 

 milliners, the latter and 

 their customers caus- 



ing some of the most Bill OF Egret. (After Swaiusou.) 



abominable cruelty 



practised in the animal world (see above, pp. 192, 228). The 

 largest species is A. occidentalis, chiefly known from Louisiana, 

 Florida and Cuba ; but one not much less, the Gi'eat Egret, A. alba, 

 belongs to the Old World, breeding regularly in south-eastern 

 Europe, and occasionally straying to Britain. A third, A. egretta, 

 represents it in America, while much the same may be said of two 

 smaller species, A. garzetia, the Little Egret of English authors, and 

 A. candidissima ; and a sixth, A. intermedia, is common in Lidia, 

 China and Japan, besides occurring in Australia. The group of 

 Semi-egrets, containing some nine or ten forms, among which the 

 Buff-backed Heron, A. bubtdcus, is the only species that is known to 

 have occurred in Europe, is hardly to be distinguished from the 

 last section except by their plumage being at certain seasons varied 

 in some species with slaty-blue and in others with rufous. The 

 Rail-like Herons form Schlegel's next section, but it can scarcely be 

 satisfactorily differentiated, and the epithet is misleading, for its 

 members have no Rail-like affinities, though the typical species, 

 which inhabits the south of Europe, and occasionally finds its way 

 to England, has long been known as A. ralloides} Nearly all these 

 birds are tropical or subtropical. Then there is the somewhat 

 better defined group of Little Bitterns (Ardetta) containing about a 

 dozen species — the smallest of the whole Family. One of them, A. 

 nmiuta, though very local in its distribution, is a native of the 

 greater part of Europe, and formerly bred in England. It has a 

 close counterjDart in the A. exilis of North America, and is repre- 

 sented by three or four forms in other parts of the world, the A. 

 jmsilla of Australia especially differing very slightly from it. 

 Ranged by Schlegel with these birds, which are all remarkable for 

 their skulking habits, but more resembling the true Herons in their 

 nature, are the common Green Bittern of America, A. virescens, and 

 its very near ally the African A. atricapilla, from which last it is almost 

 impossible to distinguish the A. javanka, of wide range throughout 

 Asia and its islands, while other species, less closely related, occur 



^ It is the " Squacco-Heron " of modern British authors — the distinctive name, 

 given " Sgnacco " by AVillughby and Ray from Ahlrovandus, having been mis- 

 spelt by Latham. 



