NIGHT-HERON. 175 



evidence of Messrs. Paget, in 1834, that Mr. Youell had 

 known six or seven of them to have been killed in 

 that locahty, at different times, and in Mr. Hunt's List 

 (1829), one is said to have been killed at Docking, and 

 another at Holkham; the latter, according to Messrs. 

 Sheppard and Whitear, in 1819. Again, on the 24th of 

 May, 1824, from a fruit tree, out of the north gates at 

 Yarmouth, vt^as shot the memorable specimen, which, first 

 recorded by Mr. Youell, in the Linnean Society's Trans- 

 actions (vol. xiv., p. 588), as the Cayenne night-heron 

 (Ardea cayennensis, Linn.^, was, as such, included by 

 Selby in his "Illustrations of British Ornithology.""^ 

 This bird, however, which is now in Mr. Gurney's 

 collection, and was purchased by him from the late Mr. 

 Thurtell, of Eaton,t has been long since established as 

 only a very fine adult specimen of Nycticorax griseus, 

 remarkable, as stated by Mr. Youell, for having " six 

 crest feathers of unequal length," and for the straight- 

 ness and rigidity of those feathers. I may here remark, 

 however, that Dr. Henry Giglioli, in his " Notes on the 

 birds observed at Pisa and its neighbourhood in 1864" 

 (Ibis, 1865, p. 60), particularly mentions the variable 

 number of the feathers in the occipital crest of the 

 common night-heron, he having procured a specimen 

 with six, although he fomid three the more usual 

 number. In the same winter of 1824, according to 

 some notes recently supplied me by Mr. Rising, of 

 Horsey, no less than three specimens of this heron were 

 killed on the North Denes, at Yarmouth, and another. 



* So recorded also in Messrs. Paget's " Sketch," in Hunt's 

 List and in the " Catalogue of British Birds," by Mr G. R. Gray, 

 of the British Museum. 



t Mr. Thurtell bought this bird originally from Harvey, a 

 Yarmouth bird preserver, and beHeving it to be a true Cayenne 

 night-heron, refused £30 for it, offered him by the late Mr. Lombe. 



