GREAT HERON. 61 



mere degenerated species, were it not that the American is 

 greatly superior in size and weight to the European species, the 

 former measuring four feet four inches, and weighing upwards 

 of seven pounds; the latter three feet three inches, and rarely 

 weighing more than four pounds. Yet with the exception of 

 size, and the rust coloured thighs of the present, they are ex- 

 tremely alike. The common Heron of Europe, however, is not 

 an inhabitant of the United States. 



The Great Heron does not receive his full plumage during 

 the first season, nor until the Summer of the second. In the first 

 season the young birds are entirely destitute of the white plu- 

 mage of the crown, and the long pointed feathers of the back, 

 shoulders, and breast. In this dress I have frequently shot them 

 in Autumn. But in the third year, both males and females have 

 assumed their complete dress, and, contrary to all the European 

 accounts which I have met with, both are then so nearly alike 

 in colour and markings, as scarcely to be distinguished from 

 each other; both having the long flowing crest, and all the or- 

 namental white pointed plumage of the back and breast. Indeed 

 this sameness in the plumage of the males and females, when 

 arrived at their perfect state, is a characteristic of the whole of 

 the genus with which I am acquainted. Whether it be different 

 with those of Europe, or that the young and imperfect birds 

 have been hitherto mistaken for females I will not pretend to 

 say, though I think the latter conjecture highly probable, as the 

 Night Raven (Jlrdea Nycticorax) has been known in Europe 

 for several centuries, and yet in all their accounts the sameness 

 of the colours and plumage of the male and female of that bird 

 is no where mentioned; on the contrary, the young or yearling 

 bird has been universally described as the female. 



On the eighteenth of May I examined, both externally and 

 by dissection, five specimens of the Great Heron, all in com- 

 plete plumage, killed in a cedar swamp near the head of Tuck- 

 ahoe river, in Cape May county, New Jersey In this case the 

 females could not be mistaken, as some of the eggs were nearly 

 ready for exclusion. 



