PURPLE HERON.
CRESTED PI IM'l.i: HEEON, I'' RPLE CRESTED HERON. AFRICAN HERON.
Ardea purpurea, LINNAEUS.
" Oaspka, PENNANT. MONTAGU.
" variigaia, LATHAM.
rufa, LATHAM.
'1 Bo/a urvs, GM E LI N .
'' siellaris major, RAY. WILLUGHHY.
Ardea—A Heron. Purpurea—Purplc-rolonred.
THE European range of the Purple Heron extends from Holland,
where Sir William Jardine has observed that it is not uncommon—
France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Greece, and Switzerland, to Russia,
Turkey, and the distant borders of the Black and the Caspian Seas.
I n Africa also, from Nubia to the Cape of Good Hope; and in Asia
—in Tartary, India, Siberia, Java, and the Philippine Islands.
tSeveral specimens of this elegant and beautiful species have been
obtained:—In Norfolk three or four, one of them in May, 1S30. In
Yorkshire one, a male, at Temple Thorpe, near Leeds, the 24th. of
May, 1850; one near Flamborough, in young plumage, in 18-3o; and
one near Harpham, in the East-Riding, on the Lowthorpe stream, one,
if 1 may be allowed a brief digression, of the best trout waters that
I know; and where, when I have been able to spare tune for an
occasional holiday. 1 have, as one of the ' favoured few,' thanks to
the kindness of the St. Qtuntin family, had by no means indifferent
success in fly-fishing; as also in another preserve on the same river,
a little lower down.
Anglers, or at all events, that branch of the family to which alone
I belong, that which disdains every means of capture but the artitieial
t h , are, it is perhaps too well known, apt, though with the
most perfect absence of the wish to deceive, to magnify the size of
what they have taken, and still more that of what they have just
missed taking. A pair of scales however, with their corresponding
weights, admit of no such deception, and the following notes from my