Jt HOfMS COU^JTieS' HSRO^RT 159 



all the night. The ditches are not wholly cased in ice, 

 nor is the moorland yet so hard as to drive them to the 

 sea. Wild duck settle down in the darkness in the reeds 

 along the river. From the sky above sounds now and 

 then the muttered croak of a heron flying leisurely 

 down from his home among the hills. 



A dreary watch is his, as he waits all night among the 

 sedge that lines the stream. Round his broad feet 

 planted on the sand the icy waves are flowing. Silent he 

 stands, and motionless, watching in the moonlight for 

 faintest stir of eel or minnow. The frogs to whom his 

 sport is death are lying all unconscious of the nearness 

 of their foe, in the mud at the bottom of the river. The 

 heron's dress seems at first sight ill adapted to withstand 

 the bitter weather ; but his wings are thick and strong 

 and the flowing plumes upon his breast no doubt defend 

 him well. 



A shy and solitary bird is the. grey-coated fisher, a 

 lover of wild haunts remote from man, a lingerer by 

 lonely mere and solitary stream. Have immemorial 

 years of training the stillness and the silence of long 

 vigil on calm moonlit nights given him his air of 

 gravity and gloom, or do traditions of his race recall old 

 memories of vanished greatness ? 



Once he was a bird of mark, honoured by the chase of 

 kings. Stern penalties protected his sequestered haunts; 

 fines and imprisonment defended him from harm. Under 

 the Plantagenets he was the prince of wild fowl. In 

 Tudor times it was still criminal to compass his destruction 

 save by the falcon or the longbow. The fowler of our 



