Mergus — Merops \ \ 3 



Herons 1 . Such as make their nests on sea-cliffs generally- 

 live on prey from the sea, but such as breed on trees seek 

 rivers, lakes, and streams to get their food. 



Of the Merops, from Aristotle. 



There are some who insist that Meropes foster 

 the old age of their parents and thus take their turn, 

 so that the parents not in age alone are nourished 

 by the labour of their offspring, but as soon as power 

 is given to these : that neither does the mother-bird 

 fare forth nor yet the father, but they stay within 

 a resting place and are fed by the aid of those which 

 they themselves have bred, nourished and reared. 

 The plumage of this bird is pale beneath, but blue 

 above like that in Halcyon : the pinnules at the end 

 of the wings are reckoned red. It lays six or seven 

 eggs in summer in the softer banks, and makes its 

 nurseries by boring into these for quite four cubits, 

 and it also uses hollows in the soil. 



Plixy. 



Nor truly is less skill shewn by those birds which 

 make their nurseries in the soil, since the weight of 

 their bodies hinders them from mounting to a height. 

 The kind called Merops feeds its parents in retreat ; 

 the colour of its feathers underneath is pale, the upper 

 surface blue, the former being somewhat red. It 

 breeds within a hole, bored out six feet in depth. 



In fairness I admit that I have never seen the Merops, 

 nor have I met anyone who ever saw it. Still I am not 

 unaware that there arc not unlearned schoolmasters among 

 the Germans, who would teach us that their grunspecht is 

 the Merops, though against the sense of Aristotle and Pliny. 



1 Compare with this Sir T. Browne's Notes and Letters on the Natural 

 History of Norfolk (ed. Southwell) p. n (1902). 



t. 8 



