96 
PE ALE’S EGRET HERON. 
J1 It DILI PEALII. 
Plate XXVI. Fig. 1. 
Mm Pealn, Nob. in Am. Lyc. New York, II, p. 155. Id. Cat. birds U. S. in Contr. 
Macl. Lyc. Id. Syn. birds U. S. 
i 
! 
My collection. 
Among the numerous and still badly known tribes of Herons—a 
genus which even as reduced according to the sounder views of 
modern authors, yet consists of about fifty species, spread pretty 
nearly in equal numbers over all parts of the world—a small 
group has been distinguished in common language before it was 
recognised by naturalists, under the name of Egret, and it may be 
admitted into the system as a secondary division of the subgenus 
Jlrdea, as this is distinguished from Botaurus , Nycticorax, See. 
Their elegance of shape, long and slender bill, but especially 
their snowy whiteness, and the flowing train of plumes by which 
they are adorned in the perfect state, make them easily cognizable 
even at a distance, and seem fully to entitle them to such a 
distinction. But this very similarity, as one may well imagine, 
renders the several species, for there are several of them, liable 
to be easily confounded together. Besides their remarkable 
similarity of form, colours are wanting to discriminate them; and 
we are reduced to those exhibited by the bills, lora and feet, to 
the proportions of the bird and its respective members, and to 
the nature of the plumage of the crest and trains that ornament 
the adults. The privation of these ornaments in the young, and 
in the adults also when moulting, increases the difficulty, and has 
