30 
ARDEA HERODIAS. 
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 upwards 
of seven pounds; the latter, three feet three inches, 
and rarely weighing more than four pounds. Yet, with 
the exception of size, and the rust coloured thighs of 
the present, they are extremely alike. The common 
heron of Europe, however, 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 acquainted. Whether it be 
different with those of Europe, or that the young and 
imperfect birds have been hitherto mistaken 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 mentioned ; on the contrary, the 
young or yearling bird has been universally described 
as the female. 
On the 18th of May I examined, both externally and 
by dissection, five specimens of the great heron, all in 
complete plumage, killed in a cedar swamp near the 
