402 TAXIDERMY AND MODELLING 



another (with young), were some yellow iris, Iris pseudacotus, 

 in bloom." 



The mounting of such a group as this, it will be seen, would 

 tax the utmost resources of the modeller, but when accom- 

 plished would be a dream of beauty. 



Perhaps the best group in the Leicester Museum is that 

 of the herons, the account of whose capture may be interesting.-* 



On 5th May, 1884, I went over to Stapleford Park, by permission 

 of the late Rev. B. Sherard Kennedy, to see the heronry, and, if 

 possible, procure a pair of old birds with the nest and young for the 

 Museum. The heronry had increased since Harley's time, from forty 

 to fifty nests being built in high elms and firs on an island in the lake, 

 to which the keeper rowed me. Nests and birds were so plentiful, 

 and the latter doing so much damage to the fishery, that the keeper 

 asked me to shoot several, and so, being provided, he with a 12- 

 bore C.F. and I with a '320 rook-rifle, we took up our position 

 within sixty yards or so of a nest, which he believed to be tenanted by 

 "chicks." Soon afterwards something stirred, and, thinking it must 

 be the old bird, I fired and evidently struck it, as it then stood up, 

 and slightly raising its wings, subsided again into the nest. Lucas, 

 the keeper, at once said, " He's hit," and began to climb the tree, but, 

 when near the top, out scuttled the bird, rising amongst the thick 

 twigs and soaring overhead, and showing that the ball had cut 

 some of the primaries away, and, in spite of perhaps a flesh wound, 

 the bird — a fine example — made its escape. Moving to another part 

 of the wood, we lay in ambush within about seventy yards of a large 

 and high elm-tree, on the topmost branches of which were placed no 

 less than five nests. Half an hour's watch brought what appeared to 

 be — by one of the gleams of sunshine with which we were favoured — 

 an adult bird slowly sailing around high up in the air. He saw no 

 danger and lowered his flight, and, just as he poised himself with out- 

 stretched wings on the edge of one of the nests, I fired, cutting him 

 headlong into it. Great was the jubilation ! for, as he fell, we imagined 

 we could see the black and white plumage, and the long plumes, of a 



' The Vertebrate Animals of Leicestershire and Rutland, by Montagu Browne, 

 pp. 121-123. 



