156 
ARDEIDJ£, 
of 1811, a most interesting pet bird of this species, appropriately 
called there Camelo-poulo. 
The purple heron has many times occurred in the eastern and 
southern counties of England ; but is only known to have visited 
Scotland once.'^ It seems not to range northward on the Euro- 
pean continent. 
THE EGEET, 
Ardea garzetta, Linn. 
Is of extremely rare occurrence, 
Mil. E. Ball, Director of the University Museum, Dublin, has 
kindly copied for my use the following entry, made in the ^ Dona- 
tion Book^ of that institution. — Dec. 1788. Eev. J. Elgee, Wex- 
ford, presented a bird of the species called the small white heron, 
whose present existence in the British Islands has been doubted.’’^ 
The specimen is now gone ; but the remark — whose present exist- 
ence, &c.^^ — leaves no uncertainty on my mind that the A. Garzetta 
is meant. The allusion is probably to PennanEs British Zoology, 
published in 1776, where it is remarked of this species — We 
once received out of Anglesea the feathers of a bird shot there, 
which we suspect to be the egret ; tliis is the only instance, 
perhaps, of its being fomid in our country. That formerly this 
bird was very frequent here appears .by some of the old biUs of 
fare, (Yol. ii. Appendix, p. 536.) Pennant adopts the name 
of egret for this bird ; but httle white heron is his first quoted 
synonym. The name used in the Donation Book appears in Wil- 
loughby, under the head of Lesser White Heron, Ardea alba 
minor” where it is remarked : — The second lesser white heron 
of Aldrovandus is the very same with this,'’^ with the addition 
respecting the latter species : — This, I say, is without all doubt 
the same with our small white heron ; neither (as I judge) doth 
it differ from the Garzetta of Aldrovand,’^ p. 280. 
* A notice of this one, shot in Aberdeenshire, about the beginning of March 1847, 
appears in the Zoologist for July 1849, p. 2497, by the Rev. James Smith. 
