STATUS OF THE BITTERN 183 
bird called Buttor by the English, and Pittour or Rosdomm 
by the Germans.” Some of his experiences, and that of sundry 
German friends, whose veracity he is careful to vouch for, 
including “‘a physician much renowned among the men of 
Cullen’ are then given regarding its habits. ‘It sits about 
the sides of lakes and marshes, where putting its beak into 
the water it gives utterance to such a booming as may easily 
be heard an Italian mile away. It gorges fishes, and especially 
eels most greedily—nor is there any bird, except the Mergus 
[Cormorant], that devours more.” Ags is now well known, 
this time-honoured legend of the Bittern immersing its beak 
—a fable by no means confined to Germany—or inserting it 
into a hollow reed, is entirely without foundation.* 
Assisted by a professor and the before-mentioned learned 
doctor, Turner went to some trouble in dissecting a Bittern, 
his chief object being to examine the esophagus, which is wide 
and expansible. He found “the gullet most capacious, and it 
uses itinthe place ofacrop. Ithasa belly not like that of other 
birds, but like that of a dogf; it also is large and capacious.”’ 
He further goes on to describe the Bittern’s brown 
speckled plumage, so imitative of the reeds it lives in, from 
which is taken its name of stellaris, also the shape of the 
bird, and its neck ‘“ marvellously thick with plumes,” and 
finally its “‘ very long claws, for that which serves in birds 
the purpose of a heel exceeds an inch and a half in length, 
on which account our countrymen use it to pick their teeth and 
mount it in silver. The middle toe of either foot, which is 
longer than the rest, has a oreo claw, that is to say, 
toothed and serrated, : 
Among the various names pectow ed locally on the Bittern, 
most of them onomatopocic, the first in point of date seems 
to be myre dromble or mirdrommel. We find Bartholomzus 
Anglicus giving the name rather vaguely, while Turner also 
employed it.t Literally it means the sluggish bird of the 
marshes, but corrupted as it soon became into the shorter 
name of miredrum, it signifies the bird which drums or booms. 
* One of the first to ridicule it was Sir Thomas Browne, in ‘‘ Pseudodoxia 
Epidemica,” ch. XXVITI. 
+ Evans’s edn,, p, 125. Belon makes the same comparison. 
+ Evans’s edn., p. 38. 
