ARDEA ALBA. AT7 
for much money could I possibly induce them to make a second attempt. 
This is truly a rare egg!” 
Accompanying the egg, which Dr. Baldamus was so good as to send me, 
was a memorandum of which the translation is as follows :— 
“The eggs of Ardea alba were found on the 23rd June, 1847, in the great 
marsh on the ‘White Morass’ adjoining the Ecska, near Nagy-Becskerek, 
in the Royal Banat (South Hungary). In all there were twelve specimens, 
the whole ready to hatch. The young had white down. The very large 
nests stand on the luxuriant stems of a forest of reeds, which are about 
12 feet high, and some hundred yards from the margin. Altogether there 
were eleven or twelve pairs breeding, and pretty near to one another. Most 
of the nests contained small young clothed in white down.” 
Later in the year (16,17 August, 1861) I had the pleasure of paying the 
Doctor a visit at Osternienburg, when he shewed me the single egg he yet 
retained, and naturally spoke with exultation of his triumph in taking them. 
Subsequently I exhibited the present specimen at the meeting of the 
Zoological Society of London (10 December, 1861) and it was figured in 
its ‘Proceedings’ (ut supra); but it should be mentioned that on his return 
from Hungary Dr. Baldamus exhibited all his oological spoils at the third 
meeting of German Ornithologists held at Halle, 28-30 September, 1847 
(Rhea, ii. pp. 184, 190). I wish I could afford space to give here a translation 
of his account of the enchanting wonders of the “ White Morass” above 
mentioned, for it must be little known to English readers, and it is much to 
be feared that its glories are things of the past. | 
[§ 5807. Sia—Delta of the Danube, 13 May, 1876. 
«W.C.E.C.” From Dr. Cullen, of Kustendje, 1877. 
Dr. Cullen, writing to me from Kustendje on the 6th July, 1876, informed 
me that his son had been spending the last two months in the delta of the 
Danube, where he had been tolerably successful in obtaining eggs of this and 
other species of Herons, as well as of Pygmy Cormorants, Glossy Ibis, and 
Spoonbill, “all of which have been taken by himself and marked accordingly 
on the day of capture.” I asked him to send me some of these which I 
named, but they did not reach me till the 7th of April, 1877. Besides the 
eggs the box contained two fine skins of Ardea ala (male and female) and 
two skeletons of the same, but to my regret the eggs were inscribed by 
Dr. Cullen himself and not by his son, unless the words on one, ‘‘ Taken out 
of the bird’s body,” be in the handwriting of the latter. This specimen as to 
colouring and substance resembles the other five. All these eggs are slightly 
larger than any of Ardea cinerea with which I have compared them, but 
not so big as that which I had from Dr. Baldamus (§ 5506)—the largest ot 
A. cinerea measuring 2°36 by 1:77, while the average of these six is 2-468 by 
1:678, the smallest being that marked as taken out of the bird, 2°38 by 1-69, 
and Dr. Baldamus’s specimen measures 2°51 by 1°88 in. | 
