(li AFTER XXX.- 



As this wns to ])v our Inst day in the woods, we were all 

 eoiiteiit to do but little hard work. Brand}' Brook, the 

 usual resort when nothinir betler olTered, — still entieinu; to 

 the Captain, the Senator and the Sheriff, heeause of the 

 mj'sterions conduct of its large and cornel}' trout, — was 

 visited hj several of the party and with the usual success. 

 The Mayor and I, with the strong and willing George Saw- 

 yer as our boatman, went up Chair Bock Creek, to see a 

 colonj" of blue herons and their remarkable nests. Of 

 these latter there were thii;teen in the dead, drowned trees, 

 built of sticks and mud, generallj' upon the top of a high 

 stub, like a saucer on the head of a cane. The birds them- 

 selves, of a bluish graj^ color, with their small, slim bodies 

 and long, thin necks and legs, looked like the dead limbs of 

 the nests and the surrounding trees that they sat on, (a fact 

 freel}' offered to Darwin); and they had away of standing up 

 in their nests, like sentinels, and, when shot at, slowly sink- 

 ing down until they were invisil)le. A lucky shot with a 

 " Stevens' Pocket Ritie " — a wondei'ful little weapon with 

 ten-inch barrel, and of twenty two calibre — at a distance of 

 tifteeu or eighteen rods, brought one of these birds from its 

 perch near its nest, a hundred feet from the ground, to the 

 water in which the tree was standing. It came down with 



a tremendous thump and splash, dead. It measured, from 



8 



