Tue ZooLocist—May, 1876. 4929 
difficult, almost impossible, to discover the bird in such an attitude! But 
how happened it that while repeatedly walking round the bird through the 
rushes I had not caught sight of the striped back and the broad dark-coloured 
sides? I asked myself this question, and stepped round to get a side view, 
when, mirabile dictu, I could still see nothing but the rush-like front of the 
bird! His motions on the perch as he turned slowly or quickly round, still 
keeping the edge of the blade-like body before me, corresponded so exactly 
with my own that I almost doubted that I had moved at all. No sooner 
had I seen the finishing stroke of this marvellous instinct of self-preservation 
(this last act making the whole entire) than such a degree of delight and 
admiration possessed me as I haye never before experienced during my 
researches, much as I have conversed with wild animals in the wilderness, 
and many and perfect as are the instances of adaptation I have witnessed. 
I could not finish admiring, and thought that never had anything so 
beautiful fallen in my way before, for ¢ven the sublime cloud-seeking 
instinct of the white egret and the typical herons seemed less admirable 
than this; and for some time I continued experimenting, pressing down the 
bird’s head, and trying to bend him by main force into some other position ; 
but the strange rigidity remained unrelaxed, the fixed attitude unchanged. 
I also found as I walked round him that, as soon as I got to the opposite 
side and he could no longer twist himself on his perch, he whirled his body 
with great rapidity the other way, instantly presenting the same front as 
before. Finally, I plucked him forcibly from the rush, and perched him on 
my hand, upon which he flew away; but he flew only fifty or sixty yards off, 
and dropped into the dry grass. Here he again put in practice the same 
instinct so ably that I groped about for ten or twelve minutes before refinding 
him, and was astonished that a creature, to all appearance so weak and 
frail, should have strength and endurance sufficient to keep its body rigid 
and in one attitude for so long a time.’—‘ Proceedings of the Zoological 
Society.’ 
American Bittern in Dumfriesshire. — A very good example of the 
American bittern was shot at a small inland loch in Dumfriesshire on the 
25th of March, 1873, which I believe has not yet been noted in the 
‘Zoologist.’ It was exhibited by Dr. J. A. Smith to the Royal Physical 
Society of Edinburgh on the 25th of February, 1874, and has since, I am 
happy to say, found a place in my collection. Mr. Gray tells me that in the 
West of Scotland this species has occurred more frequently than our common 
bittern.—J. H. Gurney, jun. ; The Edinburgh Hotel, Edinburgh. 
The Labrador Duck.—The Labrador duck, or pied duck, is a somewhat 
aberrant eider. Its habitat is, or was, North America—for it is believed 
now to be on the verge of extinction. The last killed, according to the 
writers of the article “ Birds” in the new edition of the ‘ Encyclopedia 
Britannica’ (part xii.) was in 1852. I saw three specimens last week in 
