LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 123 



eighty-third year we went up a tall oak together to look at a nest 

 The giants of the forest require and will repay care as well as younger 

 woods. A poplar planted by his father, and now near a century old, 

 had been more than once cleft by lightning. Waterton always had 

 the rents carefully closed with flag and mortar, and the old hereditary 

 tree flourished in spite of its gaping wounds. 



The confidence protection inspires brought close up to Walton 

 Hall a number of birds which have usually to be sought in districts 

 remote from the habitations of men, and Waterton was assiduous 

 in learning all his teeming population could teach. His drawing- 

 room window commanded a view of the greater part of the lake, of 

 the heronry wood, and the Ryeroyd Bank, and he had a large 

 telescope to assist his observation. Six or eight herons might often 

 be seen at one time in every variety of position, from lying almost 

 flat on the grass to standing with outstretched neck. It is commonly 

 said in books on ornithology, that herons neither " dive nor swim." 

 I have known them do both. One August, when I was looking at 

 a heron, it disappeared under water for full half a minute, at a spot 

 where the lake was from six to seven feet deep, and on coming up it 

 rose from the surface and flew away. In the following September, 

 on a sultry evening, when the fish were jumping, I saw a heron with 

 outstretched neck, swimming this way and that in the middle of the 

 lake. I watched it for five minutes, when it took flight from the water 

 where it was swimming. 



The show of water-fowl in winter was wonderful. I once, in the 

 month of January, counted 1640 mallards, wild duck, widgeon, teals, 

 and pochards, thirty coots, and twenty-eight Canada geese, and 

 there must have been many more out of sight of the window. A 

 few cormorants usually joined the throng, with gooseanders, tufted 

 ducks, and abundance of water-hens. One day when the ducks 

 were alighting on the ice, in parties from five or six to a dozen, 

 Waterton said to me, " Look at the way the wild duck settle on 

 the ice. They sail round, and come close to it, and you think 

 they are going to settle, but no ! they take another round, and 

 then another. You think each time that they are going to end 

 their flight, and each time you are disappointed. It always reminds 

 me ot a preacher in church. You think he has done his sermon, 



