558 ARDEID2E. 



cated to the Linnean Society by Colonel Montagu on the 

 5th of May, 1807, and appears in the ninth volume of the 

 Transactions of that Society, page 197. A more detailed 

 account was afterwards published by Montagu in the Sup- 

 plement to his Ornithological Dictionary, from which some 

 of the following particulars are derived. 



" This elegant little species of Heron, which was shot 

 near Kingsbridge, in Devonshire, in the latter end of Octo- 

 ber, 1805, had been seen for several days in the same field, 

 attending some cows, and picked up insects, which were 

 found in its stomach. It was by no means shy, and was 

 fired at a second time before it was secured. The situation 

 where it was shot is the southern promontory of Devon, 

 very near the coast, between the Start and the Prawl." 

 I learned from the Rev. Robert Holdsworth, that this 

 ornithological prize was shot by Mr. F. Cornish, at South 

 Allington, in the parish of Chivelstone. It was placed 

 in Colonel Montagu's collection by Mr. Nicholas Dus- 

 combe, of Kingsbridge, and the specimen is still preserved 

 in the British Museum. It is a young bird, and proved 

 on dissection to be a female. 



The plumage here referred to resembles that of the adult 

 bird of this species, which is now ascertained to be found 

 in the warmer parts of Europe, and also in Asia, but is 

 not an inhabitant of America, the Ardea tsquinoctialis, with 

 which it has been confounded, being a distinct species, and 

 confined to that continent. 



In the Zoologist for 1851, p. 3116, there is a record by 

 Mr. A. Clevland, that he had obtained a very fine speci- 

 men of the Little White Heron, which was shot in the 

 south of Devon in the month of April of that year. 



M. Temminck says that the Buff-backed Heron visits 

 the mouths of the Danube, where an adult specimen has 

 been killed ; a young bird has been killed in the Crimea ; 



