FOREST TITHES 
well be called culverts ; and before reaching it we 
crawl on our hands and knees to look through a small 
opening there is between the hedge and the brick- 
work. The sunshine being warm and bright, the trout 
are working on the clean, sharp gravel, winding and 
rooting about like eels. Not large fish they never 
are that in the upper parts of these quick hill streams : 
the largest of them is only a small herring size, the 
very thing for our herons. Scotch firs, of a fine 
growth, are numerous along the run of the stream ; 
single trees, and again clumps of smaller ones. Some 
of the larger ones are sadly torn by the fierce blasts 
that sweep over the moors in winter. In the firs, 
when the trout run up, one may look for the heron, 
one of the keenest and most sagacious of birds. Many 
a time has he outwitted and outschemed me in the 
days of my youth, and I have always admired and 
respected him accordingly. I would fain write a whole 
book about the heron alone perch er, as well as 
swimmer and wader, is he. From what I have seen 
of him in the trees, he is as much at home in them as 
is a blackbird or a thrush, and his movements are far 
more graceful, notwithstanding his form and size ; 
for the bird drops, glides, and walks about the trees as 
noiselessly as a grey and white shadow. On the very 
topmost shoots of a fir that can afford him a foothold 
