A GREAT BLUE HERON. 
“Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness ? ” 
SHAKESPEARE. 
THE watcher of birds in the bush soon 
discovers that they have individual as well 
as race characteristics. They are not 
things, but persons, — beings with intellect, 
affections, and will, —and a strong specific 
resemblance is found to be consistent with 
no small measure of personal variation. All 
robins, we say, look and act alike. But so 
do all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yan- 
kee’s birthright to be different from every 
other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it 
would seem, almost as badly as she abhors 
a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were 
known, a copy 2s a vacuum. 
I walked down the bay shore of Cape Cod 
one summer morning, and at a certain point 
climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, 
meaning to look into a large cranberry 
meadow where, on previous visits, I had 
