HERONS. 265 



and some other vegetable substances. It is chiefly 

 during the night that the Bittern feeds ; by day 

 he remains skulking among the reeds or coarse 

 weeds of the marsh, or river-margin, and is not 

 easily flushed. On the approach of night he 

 emerges from his retreat, and rising on the wing 

 soars in spiral circles to a great height, uttering, 

 as he goes, his hollow boom. Goldsmith's de- 

 scription of this sound, to which superstition was 

 wont to attach somewhat of an unearthly cha- 

 racter, is poetical and interesting, the rather 

 because he seems to speak from observation. 

 " Those who have walked in an evening by the 

 sedgy sides of unfrequented rivers must remem- 

 ber a variety of notes from different water-fowl ; 

 the loud scream of the wild-goose, the croaking 

 of the mallard, the whining of the lapwing, and 

 the tremulous neighing of the jack-snipe. But 

 of all those sounds there is none so dismally hol- 

 low as the booming of the Bittern. It is im- 

 possible for words to give those, who have not 

 heard this evening call, an adequate idea of its' 

 solemnity. It is like the interrupted bellowing 

 of a bull, but hollower and louder, and is heard 

 at a mile's distance, as if issuing from some 

 formidable being that resided at the bottom 

 of the waters." And he adds, " I remember in 

 the place where I was a boy, with what terror 

 this bird's note affected the whole village ; they 

 considered it as the presage of some sad event, 

 and generally found or made one to succeed it. 

 I do not speak ludicrously; but if any person 

 in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it 

 could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had 

 foretold it; but if nobody happened to die, the 



