ARDEID.I^,. 



373 



y/-^ V'A i ■i^l\lJ 



THE AMERICAN BITTERN. 



BOTAURUS LENTIGIN(')SUS (Moiltagu). 



It is difficult to refuse a place in the British list to a bird which, 

 although an inhabitant of America, has been obtained on more than 

 twenty occasions in our islands, and was first distinguished as a new 

 species by Montagu, from a specimen killed in Dorsetshire in 1S04. 

 Since that date others have been recorded from Kent, Sussex, 

 Hants, Devon, Pembrokeshire, Anglesea, Lancashire and York- 

 shire; in Scotland, from the Pentland Hills, Dumfriesshire, Islay, 

 Aberdeenshire and Caithness ; in Ireland, from cus. Down, Armagh, 

 Louth, Tipperary and Cork. As far as is known, all these have been 

 obtained between October and January, with the exception of one 

 shot in Dumfriesshire on March 25tli 1S78: dates which coincide 

 with those of its well-known annual migrations. Although an 

 example was killed in Guernsey on October 27th 1870, the Ameri- 

 can Bittern has no: yet occurred on the Continent ; and this may 

 be accounted for by the fact that the greater part of the trade across 

 the North Atlantic is to the British Islands, which are, also, the 

 nearest land. There can be little doubt that man}-, and probably 



