858 Birds of Celebes: Ardeidae. 



the sexes. He also ascertained (so far as was possible) that, though the white- 

 spotted birds as a rule are females and young males, the female sometimes 

 assumes the dress of the adult male; also that the young male pairs when still 

 wearing the spotted plumage. "From the number of adult females I examined 

 there can be no doubt that the immature dress is the full feminine costume; 

 and that an occasional female, probably well advanced in years, should aftect 

 the male plumage is a very ordinary circumstance among birds. But what means 

 the adult male in immature dress? I presume that males require two years to 

 acquire their full plumage, and breed in their first year". It ajjpears that the 

 allied A. cinnamomea also is not in full dress in its second year. Further ob- 

 servations by Godlewski (b 11) tend to prove that it is the male which hatches 

 the eggs. 



Schrenck's Bittern is a migratory species, and it is hardly to be doubted 

 that the specimens discovered in Celebes were simply winter visitors to the 

 island, as indeed their dates of capture or killing seem to prove. The first 

 specimen was from the Drs. Saras in, and it was closely followed by a second 

 from our native hunters. Both were in the white-spotted dress, and we, in 

 ignorance of the great sexual diff"erence in A. eurhythma^ took it for a new species 

 and described it as A. riedeli. A further specimen, a male in fully adult plum- 

 age, from the Sarasins soon convinced us of our error; and subsequently a third 

 valuable specimen in transition-plumage was obtained by them. 



Dr. Stejneger in his excellent "Review of Japanese Birds" (10) makes a 

 subgenus, Nannocnus, for this species and A. cinnamomea, pointing out that they 

 diff'er from Ardetta in having the lower end of the tibia naked (not feathered 

 nearly to the heel joint), and a relatively shorter tail. It might have been added 

 that there is a considerable diff'erence in the foot, the toes of Nannocnus being 

 more slender and longer, the claws shorter, and the proportions of the phalanges 

 different — the first joint of the middle toe half as long again as in Ardetta, 

 and the first joint of the inner toe also longer and not crooked. But by their 

 plumage A. eurhythma and A. sinensis betray a near affinity; the adult male of 

 the former might almost be described as similar to A. sinensis, but much more 

 saturate in its colours, or A. sinensis as a bleached form of A. eurhythma. In 

 plumage A. eurhythma and cinnamomea differ much more when adult, but they 

 are very similar in their second plumage. On the whole we think ornithologists 

 may be grateful to Dr. Stejneger for not trying to enforce the general recog- 

 nition and use of his name Nannocnus as a generic title, though it has a better 

 right thereto than very many. At the present day the process of genus-making, 

 which bids fair not to cease till each species — we do not speak of geographical 

 races — has a genus for itself, is imijosing a severe tax on the brains of or- 

 nithologists and defeating its own ends. Even the closest specialists cannot 

 always refer species to their "proper genera", because their "peculiarities" are 

 not peculiar to them, or are intangibly small. There are others who remember 



