144 GRALL.E. 



have when they yawn and stretch themselves under the 

 oppressive burden of unoccupied time. 



But when the sky lowers, they are more on the alert ; 

 and after rain-floods, especially in the spring and autumn, 

 they range along the meadows by the smaller and more 

 upland streams, in quest of such fishes as may have been 

 carried out of the channel by the flood, and left in the hol- 

 lows of the meadow. Their toothed, or rather barbed bills 

 enable them to hold the most slippery tenants of the flood 

 with great firmness. When they fish at their full depth, 

 which is up to the produced feathers around the neck, they 

 often keep the head for a considerable time under water, 

 pressing the fish to the bottom till they can get so secure a 

 hold as to lift it to the dry land with certainty ; and as, 

 during fine weather, the time that they can fish successfully 

 is very short, in comparison with that during which they 

 cannot, they swallow the fish entire, and immediately return 

 to the fishing, and so load their stomachs with a considerable 

 number. Of the smaller fish, which come most readily to 

 the banks of ponds, a heron will catch more in one hour 

 than a moderate angler would catch in three ; and besides 

 the number that they catch, they injure many others by 

 striking with the bill and missing their hold. 



It is vulgarly said that small eels pass through the heron, 

 so that it swallows the same individual several times in suc- 

 cession ; but that is, of course, not true. Eels are, however, 

 rather more troublesome to them than fishes which are not 

 so lithe in the body, or so tenacious of life ; and unless they 

 can seize the eel by the head or gills, in which case the 

 pressure of the bill soon deprives it of the power of wrig- 

 gling, they retire with it from the water, lay it on the 

 ground, hold it with the serrated claw of the foot, and so, 

 by the action of the bill, speedily reduce it to a state in 

 which it can be got into the stomach. The young are, like 



