352 HISTORY OF 



along the grassy banks, and often along the sur- 

 face of the water. With Shakespeare's Edgar, 

 she drinks the green mantle of the standing pool, 

 or at least seems to prefer those places where it 

 is seen. Whether she makes pond-weed her food, 

 or hunts among it for water insects, which are 

 found there in great abundance, is not certain. 

 I have seen them when pond-weed was taken out 

 of their stomach. She builds her nest upon low 

 trees and shrubs, of sticks and fibres, by the 

 water side. Her eggs are sharp at one end, 

 white, with a tincture of green spotted with red. 

 She lays twice or thrice in a summer ; her young 

 ones swim the moment they leave the egg, pur- 

 sue their parent, and imitate all her manners. 

 She rears, in this manner, two or three broods in 

 a season ; and when the young are grown up, 

 she drives them off to shift for themselves. 



As the coot is a larger bird, it is always seen 

 in larger streams, and more remote from man- 

 kind. The water-hen seems to prefer inhabited 

 situations : she keeps near ponds, moats, and 

 pools of water near gentlemen's houses ; but the 

 coot keeps in rivers, and among rushy margined 

 lakes. It there makes a nest of such weeds as 

 the stream supplies, and lays them among the 

 reeds, floating on the surface, and rising and 

 falling with the water. The reeds among which 

 it is built keep it fast ; so that it is seldom washed 

 into the middle of the stream. But if this hap- 

 pens, which is sometimes the case, the bird sits in 

 her nest, like a mariner in his boat, and steers 

 with her legs her cargo into the nearest harbour : 



