THE BITTERN. 167 



of the bittern may also be from personal observation : — " Those 

 who have walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented 

 rivers must remember a variety of notes from different water-fowl ; 

 the loud scream of the wild-goose, the croaking of the mallard,* 

 the whining of the lapwing, and the tremidous neighing of the 

 jack- snipe. But of all those sounds there is none so dismally hollow 

 as the booming of the bittern. It is impossible for words to give 

 those who have not heard the evening-call, an adequate idea of its 

 solemnity. It is like the interrupted bellowing of a bull, but 

 hollo wer and louder ; and is heard at a mile's distance, as if issu- 

 ing from some formidable being that resided at the bottom of the 

 waters."t 



Of the five birds here named, the wild-goose and the bittern 

 would not now be heard by Goldsmith in Ireland, where he had 

 the opportunity of listening to them in Iris youth. J The former, 

 which then bred, wholly ceased to do so long before the bittern's 

 numbers were much lessened. The other three species still 

 increase in the four quarters of the island, with the difference, 

 however, of common being substituted for jacfc-sidipe in the pas- 

 sage extracted. From " the tremulous neighing" which is men- 

 tioned, it is evident that the writer alludes to the male of the 



referring to the bittern, which, though never found here, used — in their youthful days 

 — to be not uncommon in the vicinity of Doncaster : — 



" ' There '11 either be rain or else summat waur, 



When "butter-bumps" sing upo' potterie car.' " — p. 2355. 



* The expression — and by Goldsmith too ! — " croaking" of the mallard, reminds 

 me that the loud croaking of the frogs in the marshes near Navarino, and in other 

 parts of Greece, in the spring of 1841, was commonly spoken of on board H.M.S. 

 Beacon as the calling of " Irish ducks." I am uot aware how the jesting term ori- 

 ginated. 



f The comparison of this bird's booming to the bellowing of a bull is not altoge- 

 ther fanciful. A. friend who resided at Youghal in his youth, when about 13 or 14 

 years of age, set out oue evening with several other boys to take a particular walk ; 

 from which, however, they hastily fled homewards on hearing, as they thought, the 

 roaring of a bull in the direction they were going. The next morning they learned 

 from the gamekeeper, to whom the difference between booming and bellowing was 

 known, and who had heard the bird, that the cause of their alarm had only been a 

 bittern. The name Botaurns (applied generally to bitterns) must, we presume, have 

 been given on account of the resemblance of the bird's cry to the roaring of a bull. 



% In very retired haunts the bittern may still occasionally boom and breed in this 

 island. 



