no 
NIGHT HERON. 
I frequently observed the Indians sitting in market with the dead 
and living young birds for sale ; also numbers of Gray Owls (Strix 
nebulosa), and the White Ibis (Tantalus albus), for which dainties 
I observed they generally found purchasers. 
The food of the Night Heron, or Qua-bird, is chiefly com- 
posed of small fish, which it takes by night. Those that I opened 
had a large expansion of the gullet immediately under the bill, that 
narrowed thence to the stomach, which is a large oblong pouch, 
and was filled with fish. The teeth of the pectinated claw were 
thirty-five or forty in number, and as they contained particles of 
the down of the bird, showed evidently from this circumstance that 
they act the part of a comb, to rid the bird of vermin in those parts 
which it cannot reach with its bill. 
In those specimens which the editor has procured in the 
breeding season, he has observed the lores and orbits to be of a 
bluish white ; but in a female individual which he shot in East Flo- 
rida, in the month of March, these parts were of a delicate violet 
color. 
The Brown Bittern of Catesby, (vol I, pi. 78.) which has not 
a little confounded ornithologists, is undoubtedly the young of the 
Night Heron. Dr. Latham says of the former, “We believe it to 
be a female of the Green Heron. — They certainly difier,” continues 
he, “ as Brisson has described them ; but by comparison no one 
can fail of being of the opinion here advanced.” Had the worthy 
naturalist had the same opportunities of comparing the two birds 
in question as we have, he would have been as confident that they 
are not the same as we are. 
