GREAT HEROi^. 



generated 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 

 Europe, 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 mark- 

 ings, as scarcely to be distinguished from each other; both having 

 the long flowing crest, and all the ornamental white pointed plu- 

 mage 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 mistaken for females I will 

 not pretend to say, tho I think the latter conjecture highly proba- 

 ble, as the Night Raven (Ardea Nycticorax) has been known in 

 Europe for several centuries, and yet in all their accounts the same- 

 ness of the colors and plumage of the male and female of that bird 

 is no-where mentioned; on the contrary, the young or yearling 

 bird has been universally described as the female. 



On the eighteenth of May I examined, both externally and by 

 dissection, five specimens of the Great Heron, all in complete plu- 

 mage, 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. 



