154 
AllDEIDiE. 
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 Bistrihution. — Mr. Bennett, in his 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 Bayrer, 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 smnmer and 
autumn of the year 1826, I met with it generally from Prance 
and Holland through the intervening countries to the south of 
