PEALE’S EGRET HERON. 
99 
late feathers; while in the American the crest is formed of 
numerous elongated pendulous feathers, with loose flowing barbs. 
Specimens that we have received from Java under the name of 
Ardea nigripes, Temm. we consider as the young of A. Garzetta , 
and are confirmed in this opinion by the fact of young birds that 
we possess of the American candidissima that stand precisely in 
the same relation to this species that the supposed nigripes does 
to the Garzetta.* 
The family of the Herodii, Cultrirostres, or Ardeidae, especially 
when the group Gruinas is withdrawn, and restricting it to our 
former Ardeinae, is a highly natural one. It still comprises, it is 
true, many aberrant genera, birds of peculiar forms, and remark¬ 
able for their strange and oddly shaped bills, though still not so 
far different as to rank them more properly with any other class; 
and in their general structure, as well as their habits and dispo¬ 
sitions too much identified with these to justify their separation 
into an independent family. But the Gruinae, of which the Crane 
is the type, bear a strong analogy, and even in many respects 
so much affinity to the Gallinaceous birds, having shorter feet, 
vegetable food, and even their habits being terrestrial, that we 
think proper to unite them as a subdivision or subfamily with the 
Alectrides. The artificial character (which, as we are not now 
treating of them, is all that need be mentioned,) by which they 
may be at once distinguished from the Ardeidae , consists in having 
the hind toe short, and inserted so high up as to be raised from 
the ground except merely at the tip; while in the Ardeidae it is 
long and bears with its whole length on the ground, or nearly so. 
But as, according to the axiom of the great Linne, the character 
does not constitute the genus, even if the most general and 
* I have lately been informed of the discovery of two new European species of Egrets, 
one from Sardinia, the other from Moldavia, of which the names and characters are not 
yet given. 
