GREAT HERON. 507 
the sole lord and proprietor. { have several times seen the Bald 
Eagle attack and tease the Great Heron; but whether for sport, or to 
make him disgorge his fish, I am uncertain. 
The Common Heron of Europe (.4rdea major) very much resembles 
the present, which might, as usual, have probably been ranked as the 
original stock, of which the present was a mere degenerated species, 
were it not that the American is greatly superior, in size and weight, 
to the European species; the former measuring four feet four inches, 
and weighing upwards of seven pounds; the latter, three feet three 
inches, and rarely weighing more than four pounds. Yet, with the 
exception of size, and the rust-colored thighs of the present, they are 
extremely alike. The Common Heron of Enrope, however, is not an 
inhabitant of the United States. 
The Great Heron does not receive his full plumage during the first 
season, nor until the summer of the second. In the first season, the 
young birds are entirely destitute of the white plumage of the crown, 
and the long, pointed feathers of the back, shoulders, and breast. In 
this dress I have frequently shot them in autumn; but in the third 
year, both males and females have assumed their complete dress, and, 
contrary to all the European accounts which I have met with, both are 
then so nearly alike in- color and markings, as scarcely to be dis- 
tinguished from each other, both having the long, flowing crest, and all 
the ornamental, white, pointed plumage of the back and breast. Indeed, 
this sameness in the plumage of the males and females, when arrived 
at their perfect state, is a characteristic of the whole of the genus 
with which I am acquainted. Whether it be different with those of 
Europe, or that the young and imperfect birds have been hitherto mis- 
taken for females, I will not pretend to say, though I think the latter con- 
jecture highly probable, as the Night Raven (Ardea nycticoraz) has been 
known in Europe for several centuries, and yet, in all their accounts, 
the sameness of the colors and plumage of the male and female of 
that bird is nowhere mentioned; on the contrary, the young, or year- 
ling bird, has been universally described as the female. 
On the 18th of May, I examined, both externally and by dissec- 
tion, five specimens of the Great Heron, all in complete plumage, killed 
in a cedar swamp near the head of Tuckahoe River, in Cape May 
county, New Jersey. In this case, the females could not be mistaken, 
as some of the eggs were nearly ready for exclusion. 
Length of the Great Heron, four feet four inches from the point of 
the bill to the end of the tail; and to the bottom of the feet, five feet 
four inches; extent, six feet; bill, eight inches long, and one inch and 
a quarter in width, of a yellow color, in some, blackish on the ridge, 
extremely sharp at the point, the edges also sharp, and slightly ser- 
rated near the extremity ; space round the eye, from the nostril, a light 
purplish blue; irides, orange, brightening into yellow where they join 
the pupil; forehead and middle of the crown, white, passing over the 
eye; sides of the crown and hind head, deep slate, or bluish black, 
and elegantly crested, the two long, tapering black feathers being full 
eight inches in length; chin, cheeks, and sides of the head, white for 
several inches; throat, white, thickly streaked with double rows of 
black; rest of the neck, brownish ash, from the lower part of which 
shoot a great number of long, narrow-pointed, white feathers, that 
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