CHAP, iv.] VERSATILITY. 291 



Water Hens, to which we will now return, can climb 

 like cats when a sense of approaching danger prompts 

 them to get out of the way. If they perceive a strange 

 dog prowling about their haunts, the sportsman will 

 find as many birds clinging half-way up an ivy bush, or 

 mounted in a spruce fir, to make observations, as are 

 close squatted in the sedges. Their flight too is strong, 

 though their down-dangling legs spoil the look of it. 

 And thus, in the versatility of their powers, earth, air, 

 water, and trees are all accessible to them at their plea- 

 sure. No wonder that so supple and agile a character 

 should be averse to leading anything but a freebooting 

 life. Chaucer, to whom they must have been well 

 known, surely meant, in " The Manciple's Tale," to 

 borrow an illustration from the Water Hen 



" Take any brid and put it in a cage, 

 And do all thin entente and thy corage 

 To foster it tendrely with mete and drinke 

 Of all deintees that thou canst bethinke, 

 And keep it al so clenely as thou may, 

 Although the cage of gold be never so gay, 

 Yet had this brid by twenty thousand fold 

 Lever in a forest that is wilde and cold 

 Gon eten wormes and swiche wretchednesse : 

 For ever this brid will don his besinesse, 

 To escape out of his cage whan that he may : 

 His libertee the brid desireth ay." 



But when captivity is inevitable, the Water Hen re- 

 signs itself to its fate philosophically, and makes itself 

 as comfortable as it can, and will even breed in that 

 condition, in arriving at which contented state of mind 

 it is much aided by having part of its prison, especially 

 that towards the water's edge, planted with flags (ins), 

 sedges, and rushes, and any other aquatic herbage that 



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