324 A HISTORY OF BIRDS 



been impossible for the bird to escape without being perceived ; 

 and yet, dead or alive, it was not to be found. After vainly 

 searching . . . for a quarter of an hour I gave over the quest 

 . . . and was just turning to go, when, behold ! there stood my 

 Heron on a reed, no more than eight inches from me, and on 

 a level with my knees. He was perched, the body erect, and 

 the point of the tail touching the reed grasped by its feet ; the 

 long, slender, tapering neck was held stiff, straight and vertically ; 

 and the head and beak, instead of being carried obliquely, were 

 also pointing up. There was not, from his feet to the tip of 

 his beak, a perceptible curve or inequality, but the whole was 

 the figure, the exact counterpart, of a straight, tapering rush, 

 the loose plumage arranged to fill inequalities, and the wings 

 pressed into the hollow sides, making it impossible to see where 

 the body ended and the neck began, or to distinguish head 

 from neck, or beak from head. This was, of course, a front 

 view; and the entire under-surface of the bird was thus dis- 

 played, all of a uniform dull yellow like that of a faded rush. 

 I regarded the bird wonderingly for some time, but not the 

 least motion did it make. I thought it was wounded or para- 

 lysed with fear, and placing my hand on the point of its beak, 

 forced the head down till it touched the back ; when I with- 

 drew my hand, up flew the head, like a steel spring, to its first 

 position. I repeated the experiment many times with the same 

 result, the very eyes of the bird appearing all the time rigid 

 and unwinking, like those of a creature in a fit. What wonder 

 that it is so difficult, almost impossible, to discover the bird in 

 such an attitude ! But how happened it that while repeatedly 

 walking round the bird through the rushes I had not caught 

 sight of the striped back, and the broa'd dark-coloured sides ? 

 I asked myself this question, and stepped round to get a side 

 view, when, mirabile dictu, I could see nothing but the rush- 

 like front of the bird ! His motions on the perch, as he turned 

 slowly or quickly round, still keeping the edge of the blade-like 

 body before me, corresponded so exactly with my own that 

 I almost doubted that I had moved at all. ... I also found as 

 I walked round him, that as soon as I got on to the opposite 

 side and he could no longer trust himself on his perch, he 

 whirled his body with great rapidity the other way, instantly 

 presenting the same front as before. Finally I plucked him 



