NIGHT-HERONS— BOAT-BILLS. 283 



plays among the fish in preserved waters is sufficient excuse for its 

 slaughter, and many are killed on account of the damage they do. Never- 

 theless, the Heron is an extremely handsome ornament to our waters, and 

 it is always a beautiful sight to see one of these birds standing motionless by 

 a pool of water, or flying with its heavy wings and outstretched legs high 

 above us in the air. The nests of the Common Heron are bulky structures, 

 and, as a rule, are built on trees, though occasionally, where trees are absent, 

 they will be built on bushes or even on the ground. The eggs are of a 

 beautiful greenish-blue colour. 



When in full nesting plumage, our own Ardea cinerea dons some long crest 

 feathers and some elongated feathers on the back, but in these features it is 

 entirely eclipsed by some of the Egrets, such as the species of Herodias 

 and Ganetta, which have beautiful ornamental plumes on the breast and 

 lower back during the breeding season. The long dorsal train of the Little 

 Ecrrets (Garzetta garzetta) forms the material with which the English ladies of 

 the present day decorate their bonnets and hats. Every one of these 

 plumes, sold as " osprey " feathers by the dealers, has been taken from the 

 body of a bird killed while bringing food to its nestlings, which are in con- 

 sequence left to starve. It is scarcely possible that, in the present day, 

 when so much publicity has been given to the fact that the wearers of these 

 plumes are responsible for the slaughter of numberless beautiful Egrets, 

 and the death of the young ones by starvation, any Englishwoman can plead 

 immunity from complicity in the crime of consenting to the murder of these 

 pretty birds; and one is forced reluctantly, seeing that the plumes are 

 obtained solely for the English market, to believe that our people love to 

 have it so, and that they would rather that thousands of Egrets were killed 

 than that their bonnets should be without an "osprey " plume. 



Passing from the true Herons and the Egrets to the Night-Herons, we find 

 several intermediate forms, such as the lovely A garni Heron of Guiana 

 (Agamia agami), and the Reef-Herons (Demiegretta). 

 In the latter birds we meet with a curious fact, viz., that TheNight-Herona. 

 they have two forms, a white .and a gr'ey one, and, as far GeausJfi/ctieorax 

 as one can say at present, the white form goes through all 

 the changes of the grey one, assuming the ornamental plumes of the breed- 

 ing season ; and yet, when the two forms cross, as they often seem to do, 

 the result is seen in any amount of pied birds. The same phenomenon is 

 exhibited in an American Heron {Dichromanassa rufa), where one form of 

 the species is white and the other rufous. The two forms breed together, 

 and some of the nestlings will be white and others rufous. 



The Night-Herons are found nearly everywhere on the globe, and the 

 European species, Nyctieorax nyctieorax, occurs in the temperate and tropical 

 portions of the Old and the New Worlds. These birds breed in colonies, 

 and build a nest of a framework of sticks, in which the eggs lie in a sort of 

 cradle. One may travel for miles through a marsh without suspecting the 

 presence of the Night-Herons, and suddenly come upon the breeding 

 place, when the air becomes full of the noisy cries of the birds, as they 

 hover over their nests, and evince the greatest concern at the invasion of 

 their retreat. 



One of the most curious of the Night-Herons is the American Boat-bill 

 (Canchroma). At first sight the remarkably wide and shoe-shaped bill would 

 suggest an aftinity with the Shoe-billed Stork (Bahenkeps rex), but the 

 characters of the bird are absolutely Heron-like, and there is no doubt that 



