4 Torrey, the ‘Booming’ of the Bittern. [ January 
of a stake. I have no difficulty whatever in crediting Mr. Sam- 
uels’s statement that, on hearing it for the first time he supposed 
a woodman to be in the neighborhood, and discovered his error 
only after toiling through swamp and morass for half a mile. On 
this one point at least, it is easy to see why authors have disagreed. 
The fault has not been with the ears of the auditors, but with the 
notes of the different birds. Our stake-driver, however, like the 
pumper, made use of but three syllables, whatever Mr. Samuels’s 
birds may have done, and the emphasis—the whack—was unmis- 
takably upon the second. 
In speculating upon the probable method by which these extra- 
ordinary sounds are produced, I have had in mind the following 
considerations :— 
1. The quality of the notes,—resonant, yet curiously hollow 
and confined, as if emitted under water or under eround, as so 
many writers have taken for granted. 
2. The distention of the breast, zot of the throat. 
3. The violent contortions of the bird. 
4. The strong resemblance of the notes to pumping. This, it 
ought to be said for the benefit of readers who may never have 
heard them, is not a resemblance to the sounds occasioned by the 
giving forth of the water, but to those caused by the suction of 
the air in the tube before the water is brought up. " 
5. The similarity in kind between the full pumping notes and 
the fainter preceding ones. 
6. The fact that when a man takes air into his stomach, as 
some men have the knack of doing, the act of gulping is accom- 
panied by a sound extremely like the Bittern’s, while the belching 
of the air out again is attended by a noise quite unlike any which 
the bird utters. 
7. The fact that it is possible to imitate the Bittern’s notes (in 
miniature, of course) by certain quick openings and shuttings of 
the lips, the breath meantime being inhaled. That this imitation 
is not imaginary I have satisfied myself by the following tests: 
First, I tried it upon Mr. Faxon himself, who pronounced it good 
as to tone and accent, and especially as to the echo-like effect of 
the final syllable. Then I tried it upon a man who had never 
heard the bird, and he exclaimed at once, ‘*Why, that sounds like 
an old pump !” 
In view of these things I am inclined to believe (1 speak for 
