232 RAMBLES ABOUT HOME. 



to the meadow, they would, as it were, drop from the 

 clouds, while the blue species would quietly wing their 

 way along at a height of from ten to forty metres. 



Now, inasmuch as no white egrets have, in any num- 

 bers, visited this locality for several years, and as in the 

 Southern States they are little, if at all, more wary than 

 the blue herons, it seems to me to follow necessarily that 

 their peculiarity of flight, as instanced in avoiding sup- 

 posed dangers, could not be hereditary, and was really 

 an exercise of unusual care and forethought on the part 

 of these birds ; a mental operation identical with thought 

 in man, and having nothing whatever in common with 

 instinct as understood by us. 



Why, indeed, a flock of these great white herons, for 

 nearly four weeks, should frequent daily a tract of meadow 

 so small as this of seventy acres, it would be very diffi- 

 cult if not impossible to determine ; but such being the 

 case, I naturally endeavored to mark their feeding-habits 

 carefully, and this, with the aid of a powerful glass, I 

 was able to do. Their food consisted exclusively, while 

 on the meadows, of frogs and grasshoppers, and especially 

 of the latter, which were very abundant, and which, hav- 

 ing been caught by the freshet while in the long grass, 

 were so wet and draggled that they could not escape by 

 flight. The smaller herons seemed always occupied in 

 gathering up these grasshoppers, and never stopped to 

 plume themselves or take a quiet nap, standing on one 

 leg, as the blue herons are so fond of doing. The great 

 white herons, on the contrary, seemed to weary of gather- 

 ing grasshoppers and frogs, and would spend much time 

 in dressing their feathers ; but, while really undisturbed, 

 they never ceased to be suspicious, and the little flock 

 seemed to have a mutual understanding for their common 

 safety, as every fifteen or twenty minutes one of their 



