ARDEID.E. 161 



other soft materials. The eggs, four or five in number, are 

 of a pale green colour, without gloss or markings. The 

 Heron appears to be regarded with suspicion in some quar- 

 ters, on account of its predilection for fish; but the same 

 authority just quoted says : " I know, and freely avow, that 

 the Herons will catch fish, especially eels, whenever those 

 fish frequent the shallow water; still these birds make ample 

 amends for their little depredations, by preventing the in- 

 crease of rats and frogs." (PL XIV. fig. 88.) 



THE PURPLE HERON. Ardea purpurea. This is a foreign 

 species, occasionally met with in the British Islands, and all 

 we know of its breeding habits we gather from Mr. Hewit- 

 son's work upon British eggs. The information was com- 

 municated to that gentleman by Mr. Hoy, who was an eye- 

 witness of the habits of this species. "The Purple Heron 

 does not begin to breed so early as the Common Heron, the 

 end of May being the time of incubation. . . . They breed 

 in society, like the Common Heron, very frequently in low 

 trees, in plantations of alder and willow in the vicinity of 

 rivers and large inland waters, the nest being only a few feet 

 above the ground, upon which they are likewise sometimes 

 placed, in swamps overgrown with tall rushes, arid in exten- 

 sive tracts of reeds; they are large and flat, and are either 



M 



