HAUNTS OF THE GBALL^. 91 



traps for the smaller fishes,, they are not much upon the feed- 

 ing grounds during the day. Indeed, they are far from nu- 

 merous in Britain ; the common heron may be said to be 

 the only resident species ; and that, though very generally 

 dispersed over the country, is not an abundant bird, even in 

 those districts which are most congenial to its habits. In 

 countries where the seasons are more marked by alternating 

 droughts and floods, the species of true waders are more 

 numerous, and the whole are more migratory. During the 

 drought there is little food for them, except in the inhabited 

 places, where they, as already stated, ply as scavengers ; but 

 when the rain sets in so heavily as to beat numbers of small 

 animals out of the trees, and foster the production of others 

 in the humid soil, and much of the surface is covered with 

 stagnant water, the wading birds come in numbers, disperse 

 themselves about, and find a plentiful subsistence, thereby 

 consuming substances which would, in all flooded countries, 

 taint the air, and in very hot ones render it absolutely pesti- 

 lent, when the heat and drought return. 



It is in such countries only that the full value of the grallae 

 can be estimated, or the part which they act in the grand 

 economy of nature can be properly seen. They are birds of 

 the extremes of seasons ; and as the progress of improvement 

 in Britain tends to equalize the temperature of the year, their 

 interest with us partakes a little of the melancholy character 

 of that which is gradually fading away : and they are fading 

 faster, the nearer that they approach to the characters of 

 birds of the thirsty desert, or birds of the pool and the flooded 

 land. 



Their wings being merely organs of motion from place to 

 place ; and the pastures, in many instances, being far apart 

 from each other, requiring length of wings more than any 

 form that fits them for the chase of prey in the air ; the feet 

 and bills become the principal means of distinction. The 



