LESSER EGRET. 
Except the above I can find no account of the life-history of this bird, nor 
can I find any authentic occurrences of it in any part of Australia other 
than given in the distribution above. 
The bird figured and described is a male, collected on Melville Island, 
Northern Territory, on February 17th, 1912, by Mr. J. P. Rogers. 
The Australian Lesser Egret is only subspecifically distinct from the 
European bird which was described by Linne as Ardea garzetta {Syst. Nat., 
12th ed., p. 237, 1766). In the Catalogue of the Birds in the British 
Museum, Vol. XXVI., the latest and only monograph of the family, Sharpe 
admitted that these birds were most perplexing on account of lack of series 
in breeding-plumage, and though this was written fifteen years ago, the 
same statement is true to-day. Sharpe there admitted, as a distinct species, 
the Australian birds, and associated them with Javan birds under the 
Javan name “mgrn^es.” He however considered Sumatran specimens to 
be identical with Indian, Chinese, European, and African birds. Such a 
distribution does not coincide with zoogeographical boundaries, and it is 
most certainly wrong. To delimit the subspecies however, with the material 
available, is quite impossible, and as the Australian specimens I have 
examined with authentic data show that the legs are not black, and as the 
birds are somewhat smaller, I am conserving Gould’s name of immaculata 
for the Australian bird. 
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