398 Ardeidce. 



out in this Heronry. Mr. Penruddocke also adds his valuable 

 testimony, founded on experience, that the Heron, though un- 

 doubtedly an occasional consumer of fish, is also a destroyer of 

 some of the worst enemies of the fish; and at a meeting at 

 Salisbury of Conservators of Fisheries in that neighbourhood, he 

 has heard Mr. Marryat a great fisherman and authority on the 

 subject defend the Herons from the accusations generally made 

 against them, and declare the compensating benefits they confer. 



7. Longford Castle. This is but a small colony, which Lord 

 Kadnor does not dignify with the title of Heronry. Still, as a 

 certain number of nests has now been established there for many 

 years, and as there is no large Heronry in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of which it can be considered an offshoot, I submit 

 that it has a right to rank as a Heronry, and I claim it as such. 

 The spot selected for the nests is a clump of the highest trees in 

 the park viz., some lofty beeches about equi-distant from the 

 Avon and the stream which runs through the Chalk valley, the 

 Ebbe as it is called, perhaps half a mile or so from the water, and 

 in the very middle of the park. I do not know how long this 

 Heronry has existed, but when the Rev. A. P. Morres visited it 

 twelve years ago there were at least ten or a dozen nests. Since 

 that time the keeper says there were always five, or four at 

 the very least, but oftentimes, and of late years, seven or eight 

 nests. But here, too, as we have seen in other Wiltshire 

 colonies, the old birds, wandering off in search of food, are ruth- 

 lessly shot, and their numbers are everywhere decreasing. 



I have now enumerated all the Heronries which exist in Wilt- 

 shire at this present date. But I have several instances to record 

 of their having bred in small parties, ' offshoots,' as I may 

 call them, from the established breeding-places, or 'outlying 

 nurseries,' colonized by a few birds only ; and also of their fre- 

 quenting certain districts more determinedly than as passing 

 visitors. 



a. Easton Piers, or Percy. I have the authority of Aubrey 

 ('Natural History of Wilts/ p. 65) for saying that ' Herons bred 

 heretofore (sc., about 1580) at Easton Piers, before the great 



