54 
GREAT HERON. 
lord and proprietor. I have several times seen the bald eagle 
attack and tease the great heron ; but whether for sport, or 
to make him disgorge his fish, I am uncertain. 
The common heron of Europe (Ardea major) very much re- 
sembles the present, which might, as usual, have probably 
been ranked as the original stock, of which the present was a 
mere degenerated species, were it not that the American is 
greatly superior, in size and weight, to the European species ; 
the former measuring four feet four inches, and weighing up- 
wards of seven pounds ; the latter, three feet three inches, and 
rarely weighing more than four pounds. Yet, with the excep- 
tion of size, and the rust-coloured thighs of the present, they 
are extremely alike. The common heron of Europe, how- 
ever, is not an inhabitant of the United States. 
The great heron does not receive his full plumage during 
the first season, nor until the summer of the second. In the 
first season, the young birds are entirely destitute of the white 
plumage of the crown, and the long pointed feathers of the 
back, shoulders, and breast. In this dress I have frequently 
shot them in autumn ; but in the third year, both males and 
females have assumed their complete dress, and, contrary to 
all the European accounts which I have met with, both are 
then so nearly alike in colour and markings, as scarcely to be 
distinguished from each other, both having the long flowing 
crest, and all the ornamental white pointed plumage of the 
back and breast. Indeed, this sameness in the plumage of the 
males and females, when arrived at their perfect state, is a 
characteristic of the whole of the genus with which I am ac- 
quainted. Whether it be different with those of Europe, or 
that the young and imperfect birds have been hitherto mista- 
ken for females, I will not pretend to say, though I think the 
latter conjecture highly probable, as the night raven (Ardea 
nycticorax) has been known in Europe for several centuries, 
and yet, in all their accounts, the sameness of the colours and 
plumage of the male and female of that bird is nowhere men- 
