A BEAUTIFUL, SOFT, SILKY WHITE 207 
Humming-bird who was made still more beautiful 
than he had been before, by three snowflakes falling 
upon him. But, with this bird, it is as if the snow 
had fallen all over him and covered him up, for he 1s 
white all over, a beautiful, soft, silky white, as pure 
and delicate as the snow itself. Only his shape, 
perhaps, is a little funny—at least you might think 
so—for he has a pair of long, thin, stilty legs, and a 
long, thin, snaky neck, and a long, sharp, pointed 
beak, so that all three of these together make him a 
tall, thin, stilty bird. ‘Something like a stork, that 
is,’ you will say, for you will have seen pictures of 
storks, even if you have not seen one alive in the 
Zoological Gardens—which is a very bad place for 
him, / think. Well, this bird zs something like a 
stork, but he is a great deal more like a heron, that 
long-legged, long-necked bird that stands for hours 
in the water, waiting for a fish to come near it, so that 
it may catch it and swallow it; for the heron, you 
know, lives on fish and frogs, and things of that 
sort. 
Yes, he is very like a heron, and, do you know, 
there is a very good reason for that, because the 
White Egret 7s a heron. Some birds, I must tell 
you, have names which are like our surnames, and 
show the family they belong to. As long as you 
only know a boy’s or girl’s Christian name—Reginald 
