ARDETTA INVOLUCRIS. 103 



assimilating to that of the dead yellow and brown-spotted rushes always 

 found amongst the green ones ; but I did not know for many years that 

 the bird possessed a marvellous instinct that made its peculiar conforma- 

 tion and imitative colour far more advantageous than they could be of 

 themselves. 



One day in November 1870, when out shooting, I noticed a Variegated 

 Heron stealing off quickly through a bed of rushes, thirty or forty yards 

 from me ; he was a foot or so above the ground, and went so rapidly 

 that he appeared to glide through the rushes without touching them. 

 I fired, but afterwards ascertained that in my hurry I missed my aim. 

 The bird, however, disappeared at the report ; and thinking I had killed 

 him, I went to the spot. 



It was a small isolated bed of rushes I had seen him in; the mud 

 below and for some distance round was quite bare and hard, so that it 

 would have been impossible for the bird to escape without being per- 

 ceived; and yet, dead or alive, he was not to be found. After vainly 

 searching and researching through the rushes for a quarter of an hour 

 I gave over the quest in great disgust and bewilderment, and, after 

 reloading, was just turning to go, when, behold ! there stood my Heron 

 on a reed, no more than eight inches from, and on a level with, my 

 knees. He was perched, the body erect, and the point of the tail 

 touching the reed grasped by its feet ; the long slender tapering neck 

 was held stiff, straight and vertically ; and the head and beak, instead 

 of being carried obliquely, were also pointing up. There was not, from 

 his feet to the tip of his beak, a perceptible curve or inequality, but 

 the whole was the figure (the exact counterpart) of a straight tapering 

 rush : the loose plumage arranged to fill inequalities, and the wings 

 pressed into the hollow sides, made it impossible to see where the body 

 ended and the neck began, or to distinguish head from neck or beak from 

 head. This was, of course, a front view ; and the entire under surface 

 of the bird was thus displayed, all of a uniform dull yellow, like that of 

 a faded rush. I regarded the bird wonderingly for some time ; but not 

 the least motion did it make. I thought it was wounded or paralyzed 

 with fear, and, placing my hand on the point of its beak, forced the head 

 down till it touched the back ; when I withdrew my hand, up flew the 

 head, like a steel spring, to its first position. I repeated the experi- 

 ment many times with the same result, the very eyes of the bird 

 appearing all the time rigid and unwinking like those of a creature in a 

 fit. What wonder that it is so difficult, almost impossible, to discover 

 the bird in such an attitude ! But how happened it that while 

 repeatedly walking round the bird through the rushes I had not caught 

 sight of the striped back and the broad dark-coloured sides ? I asked 



