ORDER GRALL.H:. 4-89 



ing the shedding of human blood ; but they have generally 

 contented themselves with the lives of their victims, without 

 subjecting them to deliberate cruelty, or protracted sufferings, 

 like some of the more civilized and christian nations of the 

 west. 



The Crested Purple Heron^ (Ardea Purpurea, Linn.^ 

 is a very handsome bird. The Ardea Purpurata of 

 Gmelin, Purple Heron of Latham, seems to be the young ; 

 as are also the Ardea Caspica, of Gmelin, and the Ardea 

 Monticola of La Perouse. Figures of the same bird may be 

 seen in the German Ornithology of Borkhausen, and in the work 

 of our countryman Lewin, under the name of the African heron. 



The first of these writers attributes to the male only the 

 elongated feathers which fall over the neck, and in his 

 account of the manners of this bird, says, that it is not less 

 fearful, nor suspicious, than the other species of the same 

 genus. The length, however, of its wings, occasions some 

 impediment to the promptitude of its retreat, and obliges it 

 to seek out some little eminence, where it may extend them 

 and take its flight. The German author also observes, that 

 it does not arrive at very considerable elevations, but by 

 wheeling about, and that it does not sustain itself in the air, 

 hovering in an insensible motion, like the eagle or the stork, 

 but that it keeps its wings in perpetual agitation. 



This species inhabits, for a longer time, the environs of the 

 Caspian Sea, of the Black Sea, the marshes of Tartary, and 

 the banks of the Irtisch, without passing the fiftieth degree 

 of north latitude, than the borders of the Rhine, where, how- 

 ever, it remains during the summer only, without nestling. 

 Fowlers are enabled to destroy it only by means of ambus- 

 cades. Its flesh, hard and insipid, has a marshy flavour ; and 

 its excrements, white and caustic, is very offensive. 



According to M. Temminck, this heron, which are found in 

 Italy, France, and Holland, is more numerous in the south, 

 and towards the confines of Asia, than in the north. It 



