HERON AI9 
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 latterand 
their customers caus- 
ing some of the most 
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 Great Egret, 4. alba, 
belongs to the Old World, breeding regularly in south-eastern 
Europe, and occasionally straying to Britain. <A third, 4. egretta, 
represents it in America, while much the same may be said of two 
smaller species, 4. garzetta, the Little Egret of English authors, and 
A. candidissima; and a sixth, A. intermedia, is common in India, 
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. bubulcus, 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.1 Nearly all these 
birds are tropical or subtropical. Then there is the somewhat 
better defined group of Little Bitterns (4rdetta) containing about a 
dozen species—the smallest of the whole Family. One of them, 4. 
minuta, though very local in its distribution, is a native of the 
greater part of Europe, and formerly bred in England. It has a 
close counterpart in the 4. exilis of North America, and is repre- 
sented by three or four forms in other parts of the world, the 2. 
pusilla 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, 4. virescens, and 
itsvery near ally the African A. atricapilla, from which last it is almost 
impossible to distinguish the 4. javanica, of wide range throughout 
Asia and its islands, while other species, less closely related, occur 
Brut oF Ecrer. (After Swainson.) 
1 Itis the ‘‘ Squacco-Heron ” of modern British authors—the distinctive name, 
given “‘Sguaceo” by Willughby and Ray from Aldrovandus, having been mis- 
spelt by Latham. 
