Little Golden Egret {Ardea RussatO).
which is beautifully adorned with plumage partly white and partly of a rich orange-yellow, ivhile the beak, legs, and all the naked parts of the skin are yellow. Its height is about seventeen inches. This is the caboga, or cow-heron so abundant in India. Several kinds of heron, one of which, from its form, woidd serve well enough to represent this little golden egret, are com- monly depicted on those Egyptian paintings in which the subject— a favorite one— is the fowling and fishing among the paper-reeds of the Nile.
Bochart supposes that anaphah may mean the moun- tain falcon, called avoTToia by Homer {Odgs. i, 320), be- cause of the similarity of the Greek word to the He- brew. But if it meant any kind of eagle or hawk, it woidd probably have been reckoned with one or other of those species mentioned in the preceding verses. Per- haps, under all the circumstances, the traditional mean- ing is most liliely to be correct, which we will therefore
HERON
218
HERRON"
trace. The Talmudists evidently were at a loss, for they describe it indetiiiitely as a " high-flyhig bird of prey" (Chuliii, 63 a).
The Septuagint renders the Hebrew word by X"P<^- dpiog. This rendering, however, has been thought to lose what little weight it might otherwise have had from the probability that it origmated in a false read- ing, viz. ar/uphuh, which the translators comiected with agaph, " a bank." Jerome adhered to the same word in a Latin form, caradryon and caradrium. The Greek and Roman writers, from the earliest antiquity, refer to a bird which they call charadrius. It is particidarly described by Aristotle {Hist. A n. vii, 7), and by yElian {Hist. An. XV, 26). The latter derives its name from XapdSpa, a Jiollow or chasm, especially one which con- tains water, because, he says, the bird frequents such places. It is, moreover, certain that by the Komans the charadrius was also called icterus, which signifies the jaundice, from a notion that patients affected with that disease were cured by looking at this bird, which was of a yellow color (PUny, xxxiv ; Ccel. Avirel. iii, 5), and by the Greeks, xKiopMv ; and in allusion to the same fabu- lous notion, iKTipoc (Aristotle, Hist. An. ix, 13, 15, and 22; JE]ian, Hist. An. iv, 4:7). These writers concur in describing a bird, sometimes of a yellow color, remarkable for its voracity (from which circumstance arose the phrase xrtpac?ptoi) [iloQ, applied to a glutton), migratorj^, inhabituig watery places, and especially moimtain tor- rents and valleys. Now it is certam that the name charadrius has been applied by ornithologists to the same species of birds from ancient times down to the present age. Linnreus, imder Order IV (consisting of waders or shore birds), places the genus Charadrius, in which he includes all the numerous species o{j)lovers. The ancient accounts may be advantageously compared with the following description of the genus from Mr. Selby's Erithh Oi-nitholorjij, ii, 230 : " The members of this genus are numerous, and possess a wide geograph- ical distribution, species beuig found in every quarter of the globe. They visit the East about ApriL Some of them, during the greater part of the year, are the inhab- itants of open districts and wide wastes, frequentmg both dry and moist situations, and only retire toward the coasts during the severity of winter. Others are continuaUy resident upon the banks and about the mouths of rivers (particidarly \vhere the shore consists of small gravel or shingle). They live on worms, in- sects, and their larva?. The flesh of many that live on the coasts is unpalatable." The same MTriter describes one " species, Charadrius pluvialis, called the golden plov- er from its color," and mentions the well-luiown fact that this species, in the course of moulting, turns com- pletely black. Analogous facts respectmg the charadrius have been estabUshed by observations in everj' part of the globe, vdz. that thej' are gregarious and migratory'. The habits of the majority are littoral. They obtain their food along the banks of rivers and the shores of lakes; "like the gulls, they beat the moist soil with their pattering feet, to terrify the incumbent worms, yet are often fomid in deserts, in green and sedgy meadows.
. Golden Plover {Charadrius Pluvialis)— winter plumage.
or on upland moors." Their food consists chiefly of mice, worms, caterpillars, insects, toads, and frogs, which of course places them among the class of birds ceremo- nially vnclean. On the whole, the evidence seems in favor of the conclusion that the Hebrew word anaphah designates the nmnerous species of the plover (may not this be the genus of birds alluded to as the fowls of the momitain, Psa. 1, 11 ; Isa. xviii, 6 ?). Various species of the genus are known in Syria and Palestine as the C. pluvialis (golden plover), C. adicnemus (stone curlew), and C. spinosus (lapwing). (Kitto's Physical History of Palestine, p. 106.) In connection with some of the pre- ceding remarks, it is important to observe that m these species a yellow color is more or less marked. — Kitto, s. V. ; Fairbairn, s. v. ; Smith, s. v.
Herring, Thojias, archbishop of Canterburj', was born in 1693 at Walsoken, Norfolk, of which his father was rector. He studied at Jesus and Bennet colleges, Cambridge, and was made fellow of Corpus Christi in 1716. After having possessed various livings, he was raised in 1737 to the see of Bangor, whence in 1743 he was translated to York. After the defeat of the king's troops at Preston Pans in 1745, the archbishop exerted himself in his diocese with so much patriotism and zeal that he repressed the disaffected, inspirited the despond- ing, and prociu-ed at a county meeting a subscription of £40,000 towards the defence of the country. His zeal for the Hanoverian cause procured him the facetious title of " the red Herring." In 1747 he was removed to the see of Canterbury', and he died at Croydon in 1756. Herring was a man of great celebrity as a preacher. His Sermons on Public Occasions were published in 1763 (Lond. 8vo), with a memoir of Herring by Buncombe ; followed by his Letters to W. Buncombe (1727, 12mo). See Bioffrcqjhica Britannica ; Rich, Cyclop, of Biog.