on curious attitudes of Egrets.



4 1



to my astonishment the bird was up and about and catching flies as

usual, and at the time of writing it was quite well.


I have only sOen Pne other-bird look as nearly like a dead one

as this, and that is the Cariama, which has a way of lying almost on

its hack at times, but it does not show the limp flatness of this Egret,

which was on its side—head, neck and all.


In writing of these Egrets, I have used the scientific names

given in the ‘ British Museum Catalogue of Birds,’ but I must say

I do not agree with dividing up the typical species among different

genera as is there done. The totally white Egrets are all singu¬

larly alike in general characters when in undress plumage, and

though they differ in size and in decorative details when in nuptial

dress, they all show the “ osprey :;: ” plumes on the hack at least, and

these are of the same highly filamentous character in all. They thus

form a very natural group or genus. An Egret is an all-white Heron

with very filamentous plumes on the back in the breeding season,

and Science is not helped, but rather hindered, by putting one species

in Garzetta, another in Lencojihoyx, and so on. It would he really

more scientific to leave them along with the coloured Herons in

Ardea, for they are all Herons anyhow, and not so distinct from the

ordinary Herons as the Bitterns and Night Herons are.


Their distinctness is not maintained, as in the case of the

Golden and Amherst Pheasants, by hostility, for in India, at any

rate, different species may be found breeding in the same colony.

Yet we do not know of their interbreeding, although all are alike in

colour, and the largest of all, Herodias, differs little in size, in its

smaller individuals, from the middle-sized Mesophoyx. Moreover, the

white and coloured forms of those less typical Egrets which are liable

to albinism interbreed freely. Colour, however, in spite of the theories

of “ recognition marks ” and “ sexual selection," seems to be com¬

monly ignored by birds in their estimates of each other as comrades

or partners.



* It is, I fancy, now pretty well known that this trade terra for Egrets’ plumes is

a corruption of the French “ esprit.”



