ORDER GRALL.E. 487 



most elevated trees, and very seldom on bushes in coppice 

 wood, &c. The nest is composed of small branches of dry 

 herbs, rushes, and feathers, and the female deposits there four 

 or five eggs, of an elongated form, pretty equally pointed at 

 both ends, and of a pale and uniform green. In all proba- 

 bility, the identity of the situation chosen by the heron and 

 the raven to nestle in, suggested to the ancients the notion 

 of a friendship having been established between beings so 

 very dissimilar. 



The male takes great interest in the female during the 

 period of incubation, and constantly brings to her the fruits 

 of his fishing. 



Though the common herons are solitary birds, not nume- 

 rous in any inhabited country, and living isolatedly in all, 

 yet no species is more remotely extended in the most opposite 

 climates. It has been observed in France, in Switzerland, in 

 Holland, in England, in Poland, in Norway, in Siberia, and 

 throughout various other parts of the ancient continent, as 

 Persia, Japan, Guinea, Congo, Malabar, and Tonquin. It 

 even appears that this species has been seen in the western 

 world, in the Antilles , and Louisiana, and even in some islands 

 of the Southern Ocean. 



When this bird is taken in an adult state, it is utterly im- 

 possible to prevail upon it to accept any food. It will even 

 reject that which it has been forced to swallow, and melan- 

 choly so completely overcomes the instinct of self-preservation, 

 that it suffers itself to die of languor and inanition. But 

 when it is caught young, while the head is yet covered with 

 that soft down which it preserves for a long time, it may be 

 tamed, and will feed upon the entrails of fish, and raw meat. 

 It will gradually become accustomed to domestication, remain 

 with the fowl, and even show some symptoms of affection, or 

 rather, more probably, some susceptibility of education, by 

 twisting its neck round the arms of its master, &c. 



