THE BITTERN 129 



Suppositions Nests Eggs. 



with air and exploded at pleasure. The noise 

 was formerly believed to be made while the bird 

 plunged its bill into the mud ; hence the poet 



so that scarce 



The bittern knows his time with bill ingulph'd 

 To shake the sounding marsh. 



But it has been since discovered, that however, 

 awful and dismal these bellowing explosions may 

 seem to us, they are among themselves, the de- 

 lightful calls to courtship and connubial felicity. 

 (s I remember," says a modern author, " in the 

 place where I was a boy with what terror this 

 bird's note affected the whole village; they con- 

 sidered it as the presage of some bad event ; and 

 generally found or made one to succeed it. I do 

 not speak ludicrously: but if any person in the 

 neighbourhood died, they supposed it could not 

 be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; 

 but if nobody happened to die, the death of a 

 cow, or a sheep, gave completion to the pro- 

 phecy." 



The nests are formed in April, among rushes; 

 and almost close to the water, though out of its 

 reach: they are simple habitations, chiefly com- 

 posed of the leaves of water-plants and dry 

 rushes. The female lays four or five greenish 

 brown eggs, and sits on them for about twenty- 

 five days. The young, when hatched, are naked 

 and ugly, appearing almost all leirs and neck ; 



VOL. iv. NO. 2/5. R 



