154 ARDEIDiE. 



quarters of an inch of its depth are below the sole of the foot. 

 Similar callosities not unfrequently occur in various species of 

 birds kept in confinement. 



The gentleman just named has remarked to me — " With so 

 common a bird as the heron it is curious how very seldom one 

 sees an adult : they seem to get sense with their age. Of some 

 dozens which have been sent me within a few years, there were 

 but two adults." Different writers — among others, Montagu, 

 whose observations are generally so accurate — remark, that the 

 adult female differs much from the male heron in plumage. But 

 several of both sexes, set up in the summer of 1848 by the taxi- 

 dermist to the Belfast Museum, exhibited no difference from each 

 other. The females had " the black and white feathers on the 

 head," equally long crests, with the scapulars and feathers on the 

 breast as long and loose as in the male. In these cases the sex 

 was determined by dissection, and eggs were found in some speci- 

 mens. The soiled state of the plumage on the lower parts of the 

 body late in the breeding season indicated the females previous to 

 dissection. 



" Migration ?" Distribution. — Mr. Bennett, in Iris work illus- 

 trative of the ' Gardens and Menageries of the Zoological Society/ 

 remarks, that " herons may be regarded as birds of passage ; but 

 their stay or departure seems everywhere to be regulated by their 

 means of procuring food," p. 139; * * * "as soon as the 

 frost sets in they begin their migration to the southward," &c. 

 p. 140. In the autumn of 1832, Captain Payrer, E. N., then 

 commanding the mail steam packet between Portpatrick and 

 Donaghadee, observed herons frequently crossing the Channel from 

 Scotland, which they commenced doing earlier than other birds 

 (lapwings, larks, or starlings) ; but to the north of Ireland they 

 are quite constant, no degree of frost ever driving them from the 

 sea-shore. 



Over a wide portion of the continent of Europe the heron is to 

 be seen just as in the British Islands. In the summer and 

 autumn of the year 1826, I met with it generally from France 

 and Holland through the intervening countries to the south of 



