Genus— D U P E T 0 R . 
Dupetor Heine, Nomencl. Mus. Hein., p. 308, 1890 . . Type Z>. fiavicollis. 
Xanthocnus Sharpe, Bull. Brit. Ornith. Club, Vol. III., 
p. XXX vii., 1894 . . . . . . . . . . Type D. -fiavicollis. 
Small Ardeine birds with very long bills, comparatively short necks, long 
wings, medium tail, short legs, and long toes. 
The head is scarcely crested, while there is a tendency to dorsal 
ornamentation, and the breast-feathers are soft and full. 
The culmen is very long, and the edges of the mandibles are strongly 
serrated for about half the length from the tip, while the anterior notch is 
obsolete ; the culmen exceeds the metatarsus in length and is more than 
one-third the length of the wing. 
The wing has the third primary longest, but little exceeding the second, 
while the first and fourth are little shorter and subequal. 
The tail is even, composed of ten feathers, and about equal to the 
culmen and longer than the metatarsus. 
The legs are short, but the tibia is noticeably exposed, though for a 
very short space ; the metatarsus is regularly scutellate in front and 
reticulate behind, and is shorter than the culmen. The toes are long, 
and the middle toe, without the claw, is almost equal to the metatarsus in 
length. The interwebbing is obsolete, as in the preceding genus. 
In 1894 Sharpe separated this genus under the name Xanthocnus, but 
later recognised that it had previously been named Dupetor. 
I, at one time, considered that by lumping many species into one genus, 
ease of working in ornithological science might be attained irrespective of 
the incongruity of the elements of such groups. I therefore advocated the 
use of Ardeiralla for the present genus, uniting the Asiatic and Australian 
species now called Dupetor wdth the African species, the type of Ardeiralla. 
I also pointed out that Dupetor was really proposed as a substitute for 
Ardeiralla, and therefore unavailable for the species grouped by Sharpe 
under Xanthocnus. 
I now withdraw that conclusion, as, though Dupetor is given as sub- 
stitute for Ardeiralla, the only species included under the genus-name 
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