YELLOW-CROWNED HERON. 
47 
joint by a membrane, and bordered along the sides with a thick 
warty edge ; lining of the wing, dark rufous, approaching a 
chestnut, and thinly spotted with black. Male and female 
alike in plumage. The bill continues to grow in length until 
the second season, when the bird receives its perfect plumage. 
The stomach of this species is lined with an extremely thick 
skin, feeling to the touch like the rough hardened palm of a 
sailor or blacksmith. The intestines are very tender, mea- 
suring usually about three feet in length, and as thick as 
a swan’s quill. On the front, under the skin, there are two 
thick callosities, which border the upper side of the eye, lying 
close to the skull. These are common, I believe, to most of 
the tringa and scolopax tribes, and are probably designed to 
protect the skull from injury while the bird is probing and 
searching in the sand and mud. 
YELLOW-CROWNED HERON ARDEA VIOLACEA. 
Plate LXV. Fig. 1. 
Le Crabierde Bahama, Briss. v. pp. 481, 41 Crested Bittern, Catesby, i. p. 79. — Le 
Crabler Gris de fer, Buff. vii. p. 399. — Arct, Zool. No. 352 Beale's Museum, 
No. 3738. 
NYCTICOEAX VIOLACEA.— Bos aparte.^ 
Ardea violacea, Bonap. Synop. p. 306. 
This is one of the nocturnal species of the heron tribe, 
whose manners, place, and mode of building its nest, resemble 
greatly those of the common night heron [Ardea nycticorax) ; 
the form of its bill is also similar. The very imperfect figure 
* This curious species is an instance of one of those connecting links, which 
intervene constantly among what have been defined fixed groups. The general 
form and appearance is decidedly Nycticorax, and at the extremity of that form 
we should place it. Its manners and social manner of breeding are exactly those 
of the qua-bird, but it possesses the crest and long dorsal plumes of the egrets. 
As far as we at present see, it will form the passage from the last- mentioned form 
to the night herons, which will again reach the bitterns by those confused under 
the name of tiger hitierns . — Ed. 
