FABULOUS ERRORS. 157 



repeated plunges of his sharp and dagger-like 

 beak. Then indeed must the falconer hurry to 

 the spot, or he may find that his hawks have 

 ' caught a Tartar.' A mortal wound, serious 

 laceration, or the loss of sight, might be the price 

 of victory. The heron always aims at the eye. 

 I am acquainted with a gentleman who was de- 

 prived of one of the organs of vision by a bird of 

 this species which he had incautiously seized after 

 it had been wounded. I have elsewhere recorded 

 a narrow escape of my own from a similar misfor- 

 tune,* and I shot for two seasons in Ireland over an 

 old pointer and a capital dog he was whose loss 

 of one eye was attributable to an imprudent attack 

 during his younger days on a winged heron. 



Another popular error in connexion with this 

 bird is that during incubation it is in the habit 

 of protruding its legs through two holes in the 

 bottom of its nest. Now there is no reason in 

 the world w T hy the heron should assume an atti- 

 tude so painful and unnatural. Its legs are 

 certainly long, but the bones of which they are 

 composed the femur, the tibia, and the tarsus 

 bear the same relative proportion to each other as 

 in the generality of waders, and can be as easily 

 folded up underneath the body as the legs of any 

 other bird. Perhaps the story may have origi- 

 * ' Ornithological Rambles in Sussex.' 



