When on the ground, they exhibit little of the elegance displayed by the Louisiana, the Reddish, the Blue, or the White Herons; they advance with a less sedate pace, and seldom extend their neck much even when about to seize their food, which they appear to do with little concern, picking it up from the ground in the manner of a domestic fowl. Nor are they at all delicate in the choice of their viands, but swallow snails, fish, small snakes, crabs, crays, lizards, and leeches, as well as small quadrupeds, and young birds that have fallen from their nests. One which was killed by my friend EDWARD HARRIS, Esq., on the 19th of April 1837, on an island in the Bay of Terre Blanche, about 4 o’clock in the evening, was, when opened next morning, found to have swallowed a terrapin, measuring about an inch and a half in length, by one in breadth. It was still alive, and greatly surprised my companions as well as myself by crawling about when liberated. This species places its nest either high or low, according to the nature of the place selected for it, and the abundance of food in the neighbourhood. In the interior of swampy woods, in Lower Louisiana, I have found the nests placed on the tops of the loftiest cypresses, and on low bushes, but seldom so close together as those of many other Herons. On the Florida Keys, where I have examined more of these tenements than in any other part, I found them either on the tops of mangroves, which there seldom attain a greater height than twenty-five feet, or on their lowest branches, and not more than two or three feet from the water. In the Carolinas, they usually resort to swamps, nestling on the bushes along their margins. The nest is similar to that of other Herons, being formed of dry sticks loosely put together, a few weeds, with at times a scanty lining of fibrous roots. The eggs are generally three, never, in as far as I have seen, more, of a pale blue colour, inclining to green, thin-shelled, and averaging two inches in length by an inch and three and a half eighths in their greatest breadth. The young seldom remain in the nest until able to fly, as is the case with those of some other species, but usually leave it to follow their parents along the shores. If scared from the nest, they scramble along the branches with considerable agility, and hide whenever an opportunity occurs. I have given the figure of a young bird procured in October.