858 
Birds of Celebes: Ardeidae. 
the sexes. He also ascertained (so far as was possible) that, though the white- 
spotted birds as a rule are females and young males, the female sometimes 
assumes the dress of the adult male; also that the young male pairs when still 
wearing the spotted plumage. “From the number of adult females I examined 
there can be no doubt that the immature dress is the full feminine costume; 
and that an occasional female, probably well advanced in years, should aftect 
the male plumage is a very ordinary circumstance among birds. But what means 
the adult male in immature dress? I presume that males require two years to 
acquire their full plumage, and breed in their first year”. It appears that the 
allied A. cinnamomea also is not in full dress in its second year. Further ob- 
servations by Godlewski (b 11) tend to prove that it is the male which hatches 
the eggs. 
Schrenck’s Bittern is a migratory species, and it is hardly to be doubted 
that the specimens discovered in Celebes were simply winter visitors to the 
island, as indeed their dates of capture or killing seem to prove. The first 
specimen was from the Drs. Saras in, and it was closely followed by a second 
from our native hunters. Both were in the white- spotted dress, and we, in 
ignorance of the great sexual difference in A. eurhythma^ took it for a new species 
and described it as A. riedeli. A further specimen, a male in fully adult plum- 
age, from the Sarasins soon convinced us of our error; and subsequently a third 
valuable specimen in transition-plumage was obtained by them. 
Dr. Stejneger in his excellent “Review of Japanese Birds” (10) makes a 
subgenus, Nannocnus, for this species and A. cinnamomea, pointing out that they 
differ from Ardetta in having the lower end of the tibia naked (not feathered 
nearly to the heel joint), and a relatively shorter tail. It might have been added 
that there is a considerable difference in the foot, the toes of Nannocnus being 
more slender and longer, the claws shorter, and the proportions of the phalanges 
different — the first joint of the middle toe half as long again as in Ardetta, 
and the first joint of the inner toe also longer and not crooked. But by their 
plumage A. eurhythma and A. sinensis betray a near affinity; the adult male of 
the former might almost be described as similar to A. sinensis, but much more 
saturate in its colours, or A. sinensis as a bleached form of A. eurhythma. In 
plumage A. eurhythma and cinnamomea differ much more when adult, but they 
are very similar in their second plumage. On the whole we think ornithologists 
may be grateful to Dr. Stejneger for not trjing to enforce the general recog- 
nition and use of his name Nannocnus as a generic title, though it has a better- 
right thereto than very many. At the present day the process of genus-making, 
which bids fair not to cease till each species — we do not speak of geographical 
i-aces — has a genus for itself, is imposing a severe tax on the brains of or- 
nithologists and defeating its own ends. Even the closest specialists cannot 
always refer species to their “proper genera”, because their “peculiarities are 
not peculiar to them, or are intangibly small. There are others who remember 
