466 THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 
Although killed on the 2nd February, the crest was fully three 
inches long, the interscapulary plumes, disintegrated and extended 
to the tip of the tail; and the pectoral plumes elongated and lan- 
ceolate. 
This species has now been observed by me at Muscat on the 
Arabian Coast, all along the Mekran Coast from Gwader, at 
Kurrachee, at the western extremity of Kattiawar, at Teetul, 
at Bombay, at the Laccadives (where I only saw a single speci- 
men) at various points along the west coast and round Cape 
Comorin to Tuticorin, and I have received a specimen shot 
by my former Collector, Mr. Theobald, in the Tinnevelly District. 
I have not the least doubt that it is this species that occurs in 
Ceylon. On the other side of Muscat it occurs along the 
whole Arabian coast, the whole western coast of Africa from 
Suez to Mozambique, in the Comoros and Madagascar, and re- 
appears on the Hast in Senegambia and the Gold Coast. 
As has often been noticed, the remarkable fact of the adults 
wearing some of them a dark slatey and some of them a pure 
white livery, and that too, without any reference to sex or 
season, is common to other species of Demi egretta, e.g., sacra 
of Burmah, the Andamans, and Nicobars, and the entire Archi- 
pelago, including Australia and New Zealand, and rufa and 
cerulea of America. 
I have already discussed this question in its relation to sacra 
(Vol II, p. 304) and have nothing to add of my own experi- 
ence, but I have found some very interesting facts in regard to this 
allotropism in the present species in Heuglin’s great work on 
the Ornithology of North-East Africa to which I would draw at- 
tention. 
Heuglin remarks that specimens occur (1) varying from ash 
to deep slatey grey ; (2) pure white, (3) pied grey and white, 
the latter, however, being only young birds, and the pure white 
being: les common than the grey. Further that he has examined 
many nests and has found in the same nest half grown young 
of both sexes, some a dirty ash grey, and some white, more or 
less variegated with brownish grey, but that he has never met 
with nestlin gs either pure white or deep slatey grey like 
old birds. The variegated birds change as time passes, some 
into normally colour ed, some into white plumage, but no really 
old bird ever exhibits the spotted plumage. 
This is exactly our experience at the Andamans and Nicobars 
of D. sacra. 
It seems to me not impossible that both this species and D, 
sacra were originally white, and were derived from a stock whose 
natural feeding grounds were more inland and less exposed. It 
is quite conceivable that when they took to frequenting, par 
