GREAT WHITE HERON. 349 



thrust its bill between the bars, and transfixed the head of one of these 

 birds, so that it was instantaneously killed. 



When we arrived at Charleston, four of them were still alive. They 

 were taken to my friend John Bachman, who was glad to see them. He 

 kept a pair, and offered the other to our mutual friend Dr Samuel Wil- 

 son, who accepted them, but soon afterwards gave them to Dr Gibbes 

 of Columbia College, merely because they had killed a number of Ducks. 

 My friend Bachman kept two of these birds for many months ; but it 

 was difficult for him to procure fish enough for them, as they swallowed 

 a bucketful of mullets in a few minutes, each devouring about a gallon 

 of these fishes. They betook themselves to roosting in a beautiful arbour 

 in his garden ; where at night they looked with their pure white plumage 

 like beings of another world. It is a curious fact, that the points of their 

 bills, of which an inch at least had been broken, grew again, and were as 

 regularly shaped at the end of six months as if nothing had happened to 

 them. In the evening or early in the morning, they would frequently 

 set, like pointer dogs, at moths which hovered over the flowers, and with 

 a well-directed stroke of their bill seize the fluttering insect and instant- 

 ly swallow it. On many occasions, they also struck at chickens, grown 

 fowls and ducks, which they would tear up and devour. Once a cat 

 which was asleep in the sunshine, on the wooden steps of the viranda, was 

 pinned through the body to the boards, and killed by one of them. At 

 last they began to pursue the younger children of my worthy friend, who 

 therefore ordered them to be killed. One of them was beautifully mounted 

 by my assistant Mr Henry Ward, and is now in the Museum of Charles- 

 ton. Dr GiBBEs was obliged to treat his in the same manner ; and I after- 

 wards saw one of them in his collection. Of the-fifteen' skins of this species 

 which I carried to Philadelphia, one was presented to the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of that beautiful city, another was given in exchange 

 for various skins, and two I believe are now in the possession of George 

 Cooper, Esq. of New York. Two were sent along with other specimens 

 to Mr Selby of Twizel House, Northumberland. On my arrival in 

 England, I presented a pair to His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, 

 who gave them to the British Museum, where I have since seen them 

 mounted. I also presented a specimen to the Zoological Society of Lon- 

 don. 



Mr EoAN kept for about a year one of these birds, which he raised 



