6 . Torrey, the ‘Booming’ of the Bittern. [January 
the blueberry and other bushes, and when the bird flew up 
alarmed, I went to the place, but could see no water, which 
makes me doubt if water is necessary to it in making the sound. 
Perhaps it thrusts its bill so deep as to reach water where it is 
dry on the surface.” 
This notion that water is somehow employed in the formation 
of the sounds seems always to have been pretty general, although 
Sir Thomas Brown, whose ‘Pseudodoxia Epidemica’ was pub- 
lished in 1646, treats it even then as a vulgar error. He says*: 
“That a bittor maketh that mugient noise, or as we term it, 
bumping, by putting its bill into a reed, as most believe, or as 
Bellonius and Aldrovandus conceive, by putting the same in mud 
or water, and after awhile retaining the air by suddenly excluding 
it again, is not so easily made out. For my own part, though 
after diligent inquiry, | could never behold them in this motion. 
Notwithstanding, by others whose observations we have expressly 
requested, we are informed that some have beheld them making 
this noise on the shore, their bills being far enough removed from 
reed or water; that is, first strongly attracting the air, and unto 
a manifest distention of the neck, and presently after, with great 
contention and violence excluding the same again.” + 
The only American author who has treated the subject as an 
eye-witness, so far as I can learn, is Dr. C. C. Abbott,{ and his 
account of the ac¢tzoz of the bird is limited to a single sentence. 
‘“In this case,” he says, ‘‘the bird’s beak, when it uttered the cry, 
was not quite withdrawn from the water, and its voice, therefore, 
was materially modified by this fact”! He makes no allusion to 
any motion of the head, nor to the inflation of the breast, although 
the bird was ‘‘within ten paces.’’§ 
* Book IIT, Chap. XXVII, 4. For this reference, as well as for much else, I am 
indebted to the kindness of Mr. Faxon. 
+ Upon the point of the similarity between the notes of Botaurus lentiginosus and 
those of B. stellaris the only direct testimony I have seen is that of Nuttall and Sir 
John Richardson, two Englishmen who may be presumed to have heard both birds. 
Nuttall says (Water Birds, p. 61): “Instead of the dup or doomp of the true Bittern, 
their call is something like the uncouth syllables 'Aump-au-gah, but uttered in the same 
low, bellowing tone.” Richardson's words are (Fauna Boreali-Americana, Pt. II, p. 
374): “Its loud booming, exactly resembling that of the common Bittern of Europe.” 
{ ‘Waste-Land Wanderings,’ p. 130. 
§ A much more circumstantial though not altogether intelligible description is fur- 
nished by Count Wodzicki, in ‘Naumannia, Vol. II, Part II, p. 48, 1852. The bird, of 
course, is ZB. stellaris. ‘‘I saw the female ten paces from the male standing in shallow 
