Birds of Celebes: Ardeidae. 
813 
Hume and otliers describe the bird as building on platforms made by bending down 
the tops of the rushes in ponds or jheels, laying 4 eggs, sometimes 5, on nests of 
twigs. Some favorite nest-sites mentioned by Legge and Dresser are on screw- 
pines, on the gi-ound in marshy localities, or on floating islands of aquatic herbage. 
Distribution. China (Swinhoe, David, etc. b3, 6.9); India (Jerdon, etc. 6 i5); Ceylon 
fLegge, etc. h 15)\ Andamans and Nicobars (Davison b 4)\ Burmah (Oates b 19)\ 
Tenasserim (Davison b 10)\ Malay Peninsula (Hume b 12)\ Sumatra (Beccari b 14, 
Klaesi b 23, etc. b 29, b 30)-, Engano (Modigl. 6 51); Java (Horsfield 6.3, 
Vorderman 6 22)\ Borneo (Schwaner, etc. 6 3, b 25'‘^, 6 26, 6 32); Philippine Is. 
(Meyen a 1, b 5, Steere 6 28, Bourns & Worcester 6 34); Celebes: — N. Penin- 
sula (Rosenb. 6 11, 6 16, Meyer b 2, b 13, etc. 6 7, 6 35), Mapane, Gulf of Tomini, 
(P. & E. Sarasin), Lake Posso (P. & E. Sarasin), Tampira River, East Celebes 
(P. &E. Sarasin), S. Peninsula — Tjamba Distr. and Maros (Platen 6 21), -Tempe 
(Weber 6 33), Bulekomba (Everett 4). 
The first examples of Purple Heron from Celebes of which there is notice 
were obtained in the Gorontalo District by von Rosenberg in 1863 — 64, and 
Meyer found it to be very plentiful in the Northern Peninsula and Gulf of 
Tomini in 1870 — 71. Dr. Platen and Prof. Weber met with it in the Southern 
Peninsula, and the cousins Sarasin discovered it at Lake Posso on their ex- 
pedition through Central Celebes and got a clutch of three eggs at Mapane. 
Later, they encountered it when passing through splendid virgin forest down 
the Tampira River in East Celebes (Z. Ges. Erdk. Berlin 1896, 355). The bird 
is evidently a resident. 
Dr. Sharpe (c 1), unlike Prof. W. Blasius (b 21) and others, divides Phoyoc 
purpurea into an eastern and western race or species, the former of which 
bears the name P. manilensis Meyen and inhabits the localities China and India 
to Java and Celebes as specified above, while the typical P. purpurea is stated 
to belong to other more western parts of Asia, Central and Southern Europe, 
and Africa. The eastern form, P. manilensis, according to Sharpe, is “distin- 
o-uished by its uniform chestnut throat and fore neck, which has scarcely any 
black streaking at all, by the much more distinct lateral black streaks on 
the neck, by the slaty black colour of the chest, abdomen and under tail- 
coverts” {11)- 
This handsome species may be easily recognised (when adult) among the 
other Herons occurring in Celebes by its blackish slate belly taking a strong 
maroon-purple tinge on the breast, and by its chestnut-rufous neck wdth a black 
stripe down each side of it and across the face, and a third one behind. Its 
toes are long, the middle one being sometimes a little longer, sometimes a little 
shorter than the tarsus; the tarsus is not reticulate-scaled in front (except near 
the joints) but encased in large oblique scales. The Purple Heron seems to 
have no very close allies. The subgenus Phoyx was made for it by Dr. Stejneger 
in his Review of Japanese Birds (Pr. U. S. Nat. Mus. 1887, X,, 311). 
