PEALE’S EGRET HERON. 483 
small group had been distinguished in common language, 
before it was recognised by naturalists, under the name of 
egret, and it may be admitted into the system as a secondary 
division of the subgenus Ardea, as this is distinguished from 
Botaurus, Nycticorax, &c. 'Their elegance of shape, long 
and slender bill, but especially their snowy whiteness, and 
the flowing train of plumes by which they are adorned in the 
perfect state, make them easily cognisable even at a distance, 
and seem fully to entitle them to such a distinction. But this 
very similarity, as one may well imagine, renders the several 
species—for there are several of them—liable to be easily 
confounded together. Besides their remarkable similarity of 
form, colours are wanting to discriminate them; and we are 
reduced to those exhibited by the bills, lora, and feet, to the 
proportions of the bird and its respective members, and to the 
nature of the plumage of the crest and trains that ornament the 
adults. ‘The privation of these ornaments in the young, and 
in the adults also when moulting, increases the difficulty, 
and has caused them to be taken until lately for distinct 
species. Fortunately this source of confusion has been re- 
moved, and the females have been ascertained to be similar 
to their males. The species of Europe and Northern Asia 
were therefore, upon good grounds, reduced to two, the great 
and the small, Ardea alba and A. garzetta ; but both formerly, 
and one even till now, were confounded with their two American 
analogues described by Wilson. In my “Observations on the 
Nomenclature” of that author, as well as my subsequent 
writings, without excepting my ‘Synopsis,’ I admitted the 
two North American species, and added as a third the bird 
now represented in our plate; but I also erred in consider- 
ing the large American species as the same with the large 
European: they are, in fact, no less distinct from each 
other, however closely related, than Ardea candidissima and 
A. garzetia. The name of alba belongs to the European, and 
that of egretta to the American ; although Llliger, Lichtenstein, 
and ‘Temminck (?), not perceiving that it was the legitimate 
