of light and dark, running lengthwise of the head and neck, and best shown 

 when the bird is standing erect in the attitude alluded to, with feathers closely- 

 depressed? It is plain that these markings cannot help the 'stick' aspect, 

 but must rather injure it, inasmuch as a single stick or stem would be of uni- 

 form coloration, or at most mottled, rather than marked with sharp and strong 

 longitudinal stripes. The true explanation flashed into my mind to-day as 

 I was watching a standing Bittern at a distance of about ten feet. The light 

 stripes on the bill were repeated and continued by the light stripes on the 

 sides of the head and neck, and together they imitated very closely the look of 

 separate, bright reed-stems; while the dark stripes pictured reeds in shadow, 

 or the shadowed interstices between the stems. The truth of this explanation 

 must be apparent to any one with an eye for such things, who watches at 

 close range a Bittern standing motionless among reeds." To be sure. Bit- 

 terns' heads and necks are often seen projecting stick-like over the tops of 

 meadow-grasses and half-grown reeds, but who knows how many times Bit- 

 terns' heads in this same attitude among the reeds escape all notice, by virtue 

 of their beautiful rush-pattern? It may very well be that the projecting-stick 

 aspect is, relatively at least, exceptional and unimportant. My own obser- 

 vations of Bitterns in their haunts all tend toward such a conclusion. 



Reed-like patterns occur also, though in less marked development, on the 

 necks of some of the true herons, as for instance the Purple Heron {Ardea 

 ■purpurea) of southern Europe. The beautiful European Bittern (Botaurus 

 stellaris) has kindred markings with a strong admixture of richly brindled 

 grass-pattern — a pattern at once bold and subtile, whose obliterative efiEect 

 in the bird's normal environment must be consummate. So also with the 

 South American Botaurus pinnatus. The Least Bitterns (Ardetia), of Eu- 

 rope and America, have also delicately reed-marked heads and necks. There 

 are doubtless many other examples which might be cited, but these are all 

 that occur to me. 



A modification of the type of grass-pattern described at the end of Chap- 

 ter VII occurs on the South American Tiger Herons (Tigrisoma), with their 



57 



