BY COLONEL W. V. LEGGE, F.Z.S. 79 



ON THE OCCUREENCE OF SOME AUSTEALIAIST 

 ABCLEID^ IN TASMANIA. 



The past summer and autumn have been marked by a 

 special visitation of two species of Australian Herons to Tas- 

 mania. One, the White Egret, Herodias alba, Linn., which has 

 hitherto been an occasional straggler to the island, has 

 occurred in considerable numbers during the summer, both in 

 the north and south. The other, Ardea ^acifica, Latham, a 

 rare visitant to Tasmania, has been half a dozen times met 

 with in the north during the past two months. 



The localities visited by the White Egret appear to have 

 been the basin of the Derwent, including the Sorell district, 

 the Midlands, and the vicinity of the Tamar and Esk rivers 

 in the north. Mr. T. Carr, a prominent member of the 

 Noi'tbern Science Association, informs me that he has had 

 numerous examples brought to him, which has also been the 

 case as regards the Hobart Museum, which testify, un- 

 fortunately, to the old story in England : that as soon as a 

 new bird appears on the landscajDe, it is shot down by every 

 pot-hunter who meets with it. More of these handsome 

 white visitors have doubtless been immature birds, which 

 might have remained in the island, and, in any case, would 

 have returned another year; their destruction, therefore, 

 means the partial driving away of an interesting, permanent 

 addition to our avifauna. This species is so widely distributed 

 that there is no reason why it should not become a resident 

 in the island, breeding at the more retired lagoons and 

 morasses of the lake district. It may not be out of place to 

 glance here at the geographical distribution of the White 

 Egret. The union of the Australian form, Herodias 

 syrmatophorus of Grould, with the widely-distributed Herodias 

 alha of Linnaeus, very widely extends the range of the species 

 under consideration. The former was separated by Gould 

 from the old world species on account of its small size, and 

 for a like reason, the bird commonly found throughout India 

 was given specific rank by that herculean worker in Indian 

 ornithology, Mr. Allen Hume, C.B., the editor of the novr 

 'defunct " Stray Feathers." An examination, however, of a 

 large series got together from various parts of the world, 

 such as that in the national collection at the British Museum, 

 shows that the Indian, Chinese, and Australian and, 

 perhaps, the African representatives of the species are all, 

 more or less, diminutive in size, while the larger race inhabits 

 Central Asia, Russia, the Delta of the Nile, and Syria. Ex- 

 amples in the British Museum, from Kashgaria, Russia, and 

 Egypt, measured by me, gave a length in the wing of 17-6, 

 16 'J, and 163 inches respectively, while a specimen of the 

 larger race, often met with in India (and probably straying 



