252 WILD LIFE ON A NORFOLK ESTUARY 



" SIR, Has not your correspondent heard the following 

 rhyme ? 



" ' I ha' seen the roses in blow, 



I ha' seen the wilets blew ; 

 I ha' seen the " hansie " fly ever so high, 

 But I niver see nothin' like yew ! ' 



" YOKEL." 



" SIR, What Shakespeare put into Hamlet's speech was 

 doubtless, * I know a hawk from a hanser,' meaning, I know 

 the pursuer from the pursued, or to paraphrase the sentences, 

 ' I know a hound from a hare ! ' 



" In Shakespeare's day hawking was greatly followed, and 

 the heron or hanser was the most coveted quarry. The copy- 

 ist clearly went wrong, and not knowing what a hanser was, 

 substituted the word handsaw. 



"One player went so far as to imitate sawing. John 

 Kemble read the passage * I knew a hawk from my hand, sir,' 

 which he held up. He evidently did not know the vernacular 

 for heron or heronshaw, but saw that handsaw was nonsense. 



' J. B." 



Taking exception to the first reply of ' B. C.,' I replied 

 as follows : 



" SIR, The letter of 'V. J.'s' was a fair knock-out. There 

 was something so unassumingly honest yet naive about it that 

 it was refreshing. ... I did not intend entering the lists 

 until Mr. C. asserted that the heron 'dives' into the river, an 

 acrobatic feat he never indulges in. I have seen scores 

 of * answers ' fishing for eels and flounders on Breydon, 

 but he never goes more than thigh-deep in search of them. 

 At high-water he haunts the top or edge of a flat ; at low, he 

 wades up and down the drains. On seeing a fish he strikes 

 at it, sometimes going the whole length of his neck under, 

 having just sufficent length of that extremity to correspond 

 with that of the others. Rarely ' answer ' misses his footing 

 and slips into deep water off the edge of a flat, and a right 

 lively confloption he usually makes to right-side himself again, 

 although he will sometimes unconcernedly start swimming. 

 True, he lives principally on fish, but he accounts for many 

 water-voles, and would get more if opportunity offered, 

 besides other vermin. J O HN KNOWLITTLE." 



