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THE LEAST BITTERN 



Ardea exilis, Gmel. 



PLATE CCX. Male, Female, and Young. 



One morning while I was at the Cincinnati Museum in the State of 

 Ohio, a woman came in holding in her apron one of this delicate species 

 alive, which she said had fallen down the chimney of her house under 

 night, and which, when she awoke at daybreak, was the first object she 

 saw, it having perched on one of the bed posts. It was a young bird. 

 I placed it on the table before me, and drew from it the figure on the 

 left of my plate. It stood perfectly still for two hours, but on my touch- 

 ing it with a pencil, after my drawing was done, it flew off and alighted 

 on the cornice of a window. Replacing it on the table, I took two books 

 and laid them so as to leave before it a passage of an inch and a half^ 

 through which it walked with ease. Bringing the books nearer each, 

 other, so as to reduce the passage to one inch, I tried the Bittern again, 

 and again it made its way between them without moving either. When 

 dead, its body measured two inches and a quarter across, from which it 

 is apparent that this species, as well as the Gallinules and Rails, is en- 

 abled to contract its breadth in an extraordinary degree. 



While I was in Philadelphia, in September 1832, a gentleman pre- 

 sented me with a pair of adult birds of this species, alive and in perfect 

 plumage. They had been caught in a meadow a few miles below the 

 city, and I kept them alive several days, feeding them on small fish and 

 thin stripes of pork. They were expert at seizing flies, and swallowed 

 caterpillars, and other insects. My wife admired them much on account 

 of their gentle deportment, for although on being tormented, they would 

 spread their wings, ruffle their feathers, and draw back their head as if 

 to strike, yet they suffered themselves to be touched by any one without 

 pecking at his hand. It was amusing to see them continually attempt- 

 ing to escape through the windows, climbing with ease from the floor to 

 the top of the curtain by means of their feet and claws. This feat they 

 would repeat whenever they were taken down. The experiment of the 

 books was tried with them, and succeeded as at Cincinnati. At the ap- 

 proach of night they became much more lively, walked about the room. 



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