32 ALTRICIAL GRALLATOEES — HERODIONES. 



During the siunmer, in Louisiana, the young of this species resort to commons and 

 dry pastures, to feed on insects of many kinds. Mr. Moore has seen a flock of a dozen 

 hovering pretty close together above a slioal of minnows in the bay, settling down 

 with their legs hanging and dangling near the water, and attempting to seize them 

 by reaching down their bills. In the confusion of wings, legs, and necks so near 

 together, it was impossible to tell whether they took any fisli, but he presumes that 

 they did. He has found their eggs from the 10th to the 2oth of April, and a second 

 brood on the 1st of June. Two eggs of this Heron, in my collection, taken by Dr. 

 Bryant in Florida, have an oval shape, are equally rounded at either end, and are of 

 a uniform light greenish-blue tint. There is just a shade more of green tinting the 

 Prussian blue in this than in the other kinds of Heron. One egg measures 1.87 inches 

 in length by l.oG inches in breadth ; the other is 1.80 inches long by 1.30 inches in 

 breadth. The egg is more oblong than that of the cierulea, but is more rounded than 

 that of the hidovirhnia. 



Genus DICHROMANASSA, Ridgway. 



<" Demiegretta" (nee Blyth), Baird, B. N. Am. 185S, 660 (p;irt). 



^= Didiroinanussa, Ridgw. Bull. U. S. Geol. & Geog. Survey, Terr. IV. no. 1, Feb. 5, 1878, 246. 



Type, Ardca riifa, Bodd. 

 <Erodius, Reiciienow, Jour, fur Orn. 1877, 268 (\nc\\\Af;s, Hydranassa, fferodius, Leptherodiiis, and 



Garsetta). 



Gen. Chars. Medium sized Herons, of uniform white or plumbeous plumage, with (adult) or 

 without (young) cinnamon-colored head and neck ; the form slender, the toes very short, and the 

 legs very long ; the adults with the entire head and neck (except throat and foreneck) covered 

 with long, narrowly lanceolate, compact-webhed feathers, which on the occiput form an ample 

 crest, the feathers of which are very nariowly lanceolate and decurved. 



Bill much longer than the middle toe (al.iout two thirds the tarsus), the tipper and lower out- 

 lines almost precisely similar in contour, being nearly parallel along the middle portion, where 

 slightly approximated ; the terminal portion of both culmen and gonys gently and about equally 

 curved. Mental apex extending to a little more than one third the distance from the middle of 

 the eye to the tip of the bill, or to about even with the anterior end of the nostiil ; malar apex 

 about even with that of the frontal feathers. Toes very short, the middle one less than half the 

 tarsus, the hallux less than half the middle toe ; bare portion of tibia more than half as long as 

 tarsus ; scutellation of tarsus, etc., as in Herodias, Garzetta, and allied genera. 



Plumes of the adult consisting of a more or less lengthened train of fastigiate, stiff-shafted feath- 

 ers, with long, loose, and straight plumules, and extending beyond the tail ; in addition to this 

 train, the scapulars and the feathers of the whole head and neck, except the throat and foreneck, 

 are long and narrow, distinctly lanceolate, and acuminate, with compact webs, and on the occiput 

 are developed into an ample decurved crest. 



Affinities. — This genus is perhaps most nearly allied to Demiegretta, Blyth,' with which it 

 agrees quite closely in the form of the bill, and also, to a considerable extent, in coloration. 

 Veniietjretta, however, is at once distinguished by its extremely short tarsus (much shorter than 

 the bill, instead of nearly a third longer !), which is altogether more abbreviated than in any 

 American geiuis of this group, in proportion to the other dimensions. The jilumes also are 

 entirely different, there being none on the neck, with the exception of the juguluiu, while those 

 of the back are slenderly lanceolate, with compact webs, almost exactly as in Florida cwrulea. 



1 Type, Ardea jiigularis, Blyth, Notes on the Fauna of the Nicobar Islands, Journ. Asiatic Soc. 

 Bengal, xv. 1846, 376, = Herodias concolor, BoN.^r. Consp. ii. 1855, 121, ■= Ardca sacra, Gmel. This 

 Heron also is dichromatic, having a pure-white phase as in Dichromanassa rufa, the normal plumage 

 being uniform dark jiluinbeous or slate. 



