36 
AMERICAN BITTERN. 
mity of the toes it measures three feet ; the bill is four inches long, 
the upper mandible black, the lower greenish yellow; lores and 
eyelids yellow ; irides bidght yellow ; upper part of the head flat, 
and remarkably deprest ; the plumage there is of a deep blackish 
brown, long behind and on the neck, the general color of which 
is a yellowish brown shaded with darker ; this long plumage of 
the neck the bird can throw forward at will; when irritated, so as 
to give him a more formidable appearance ; throat whitish, streak- 
ed with deep brown ; from the posterior and lower part of the 
auriculars a broad patch of deep black passes diagonally across 
the neck, a distinguished characteristic of this species ; the back 
is deep brown, barred and mottled with innumerable specks and 
streaks of brownish yellow ; quills black, with a leaden gloss, and 
tipt with yellowish brown ; legs and feet yellow, tinged with pale 
green ; middle claw pectinated ; belly light yellowish brown, streak- 
ed with darker ; vent plain ; thighs sprinkled on the outside with 
grains of dark brown ; male and female nearly alike, the latter 
somewhat less. The tail contains twelve feathers. 
In the Supplement to the Ornithological Dictionary of Mon- 
tagu, a Heron is figured and described under the name of Jlrclea 
lentiginosa; and is said to have been shot in England. Stephens 
refers this bird to our Bittern ; and Temminck sanctions this re- 
ference by quoting the former as a synonyme of the latter. We 
do not hesitate to assert that Montagu’s Heron is not our species, 
which it little resembles. The figure shows it to be a young bird ; 
and one should suppose that the specimen in the British museum 
would enable the English naturalists to identify the species at home, 
without recurring to a foreign species, which it is not even proba- 
ble could have been an accidental wanderer so far from its native 
shores. 
