476 ARDEID.E. 



FoR3iERLY, as Ml'. Goulcl obsci'vcs, Avhen large portions 

 of the British islands were unciiltivatccl, and extensive 

 marshes and waste land afforded the Bittern abundance of 

 retreats congenial to its habits, it was plentifully distributed 

 over the country ; but as cultivation has extended, and the 

 marshes have been drained, its numbers have gradually de- 

 creased, and although not absolutely a rare bird, its presence 

 is not always to be reckoned upon, for in one year it may 

 be tolerably common, and then for several succeeding seasons 

 scarcely to be procured at all. 



In proof of the correctness of these remarks, Mr. Selby 

 observes that at the present day the capture of a Bittern is, 

 in many parts of England, a subject of great interest ; yet in 

 the winter of 1830-31, he was credibly informed that no less 

 than ten were exposed for sale in one morning at Bath. Mr. 

 Allis of York sent me word some time ago that in the winter 

 of 1837, a bird-preserver in that city had a dozen Bitterns 

 through his hands in a comparatively short space of time ; 

 and Mr. Heysham of Carlisle has recorded that during the 

 month of December 1831, and those of January and Febru- 

 ary 1832, no less than eight specimens of the Bittern were 

 killed in that part of Cumberland, which was the more re- 

 markable, as only a single specimen had been met with in the 

 same district for the ten or twelve years previous. 



I am able to refer to only three recent records of the 

 breeding of the Bittern in this country. Mr. Eyton, in his 

 Fauna of Shropshire, says, a hatch of these birds came off at 

 Cosford Pool, near Nufnal, in 1836, and during the same 

 summer, and in the same county, a pair of Bitterns bred at 

 Tonglake, Albrighton, in a reedy pond of half an acre, sur- 

 rounded by bushes, about half a mile from the Holyhead 

 road ; two young birds about half grown, were caught by a 

 farmer''s boy. The authors of the catalogue of Norfolk and 

 Suffolk Birds, published in the fifteenth volume of the 



