22 London Birds. 



eighteen inches jn length and nearly thirteen in 

 breadth ; and to indicate, by their distance apart in 

 a straight line, a stride of six feet." 



"They tell," says Hugh Miller, "of a time far 

 removed into tjhe by-past eternity, when great birds 

 frequented by myriads the shores of a nameless 

 lake, to wade in the shallows in quest of its mail- 

 covered fishes of the ancient type, or long extinct 

 molluscs ; while reptiles, equally gigantic, and of 

 still stranger proportions, haunted the neighbouring 

 swamps ; and when the same sun that shone on 

 the tall moving forms beside the waters, and threw 

 their long shadows across the red sands, lighted up 

 the glades of deep forests, all of whose fantastic pro- 

 ductions tree, bush, and herb have, even in their 

 very species, long since passed away." There is no 

 place in which the birds might be supposed to feel the 

 change of times more than here. The Thames-side 

 in old days must have been a paradise for long-legged 

 birds ; and even chaos itself and the modern world 

 could be scarcely more unlike than the country round 

 the little village of the Trinobantes, and the miles 

 of brick and smoke two old Herns looked down 

 upon, who flapped over London from the Essex 

 marshes one day in August last. 



It is told in a curious old book, called "Christ's Tears 

 over Jerusalem," published in 1613, that at the time of 

 the Plague of London, "the vulgar meniality concluded 

 that the sickness was like to encrease because a Hern- 

 shaw sate (for a whole afternoon together) on the top 

 of St. Peter's Church in Cornehill." But, adds the 

 writer, "this is naught els but cleanly coined lies." 

 There is a beautiful Heronry not many miles from 

 London, well worth a visit, in Wanstead Park, the 

 property of the City Corporation. 



