ON SUSSEX HERONRIES. 71 



and found it taste like hare, but do not wish to try the dish again.- Our 

 ancestors must, I think, have partaken out of sentiment ; and the Jews lost 

 nothing by the Levitical prohibition, as it appears to me. 



Nevertheless, in the ' Boke of Kervinge,' printed by Wynkyn de Worde 

 (mentioned by Daniel, in his ' Rural Sports,' vol. iii. p. 316), among other 

 good dishes of which the technical terms are given — such as " Unbrace that 

 Mallard," " Wynge that Fartriche," " Thye that Woodcock,"— we have 

 " Dismembre that Heron." 



To obtain a heronry is not easy. We find, in the ' Architecture of 

 Birds,' p. 184: — " Belon tells us that 'the Heron is royal meat, on which 

 the French nobility set great value ;' and he mentions it as one of the 

 extraordinary feats performed by the ' divine king ' Francis I., that he 

 formed two artificial heronries at Fontainebleau — ' the very elements them- 

 selves,' he adds, ' obeying the commands of the divine king (whom God 

 absolve !) ; for to force Nature is a working partaking of Divinity.' " 



A really wild heronry, not protected, and perhaps the last vestige of a 

 natural fen object of the kind, is mentioned by Pishey Thompson in his 

 ' History of Boston,' p. 676. 



He there gives an account of " a large tree, which formerly stood on 

 the western border of the parish of Leake, and nearly adjoining the high 

 road from Leverton." This " was for a long time the resort of a very 

 considerable number of Herons." The tree was " literally covered with their 

 nests ; it was taken down about twenty-five years ago" (i. e. from 1856). 



This is the famous Heronshawe tree of Leake. I went to the spot, and 

 received an account of it from a person who remembers it well, and says it 

 was an ash, and had about twenty-five nests upon it. Fifty-five years ago 

 from March 1877 (J. e. in March 1822) an artist took a drawing of the tree ; 

 and his sketch was afterwards spun or woven into a tablecloth. It was 

 early in the morning, and the Herons were feeding their young. 



