Class II. COMMON HERON. U 



thicker than what is called gold-beater's skin. 

 It must be capable of bearing a long abstinence, 

 as its food, which is fish and .frogs, cannot be 

 readily got at all times. It commits great de- 

 vastation in our ponds ; being unprovided with ' 

 webs to swim, nature has furnished it with 

 very long legs to wade after its prey. It perches 

 and builds on trees, and sometimes in high cliffs 

 over the sea, commonly in company with many 

 others, like rooks. At d^essi Hall near Gosber- 

 ton in Lincolnshire, I have counted above eighty 

 nests in one tree. It makes its nest of sticks, 

 lines it with wool; and lays five or six large 

 eggs of a pale green color. During incubation, • 

 the male passes much of its time perched by 

 the female. They desert their nests during 

 winter, excepting in February, when they re- 

 sort to repair them. It was formerly in this 

 country a bird of game, heron-hawking being so 

 favourite a diversion of our ancestors, that laws 

 were enacted for the preservation of the species, 

 and the person who destroyed their eggs was 

 liable to a penalty of twenty shillings, for each 

 olFence. Not to know the Hawk from the He- 

 Tonshaxv was an old proverb*, taken originally 



* In after times this proTcrb was absurdly corrupted to. He 

 does not know a hawk from a hand-saw. 



