30 ARDEA HKRODIAS. 



have probably been ranked as the original stock, of 

 which the present was a 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 extremely 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, tfye young birds are entirely 

 destitute of the white plumage 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 ornamental 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 (ardea 

 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 nowhere mentioned ; on the contrary, the 

 young or yearling bird has been universally described 

 as the female. 



On the 18th of May I examined, both externally and 

 by dissection, five specimens of the great heron, all in 

 complete plumage, killed in a cedar swamp near the 



