448 GREA T HER OAT. 



He is also an excellent niouser, and of great service to our 

 meadows in destroying the short-tailed or meadow mouse, so 

 injurious to the banks. He also feeds eagerly on grasshoppers, 

 various winged insects, particularly dragonflies, which he is 

 very expert at striking, and also eats the seeds of that species 

 of nymplice usually called splatterdocks, so abundant along 

 our fresh-water ponds and rivers. 



The heron has great powers of wing, flying sometimes very 

 high, and to a great distance; his neck doubled, his head 

 drawn in, and his long legs stretched out in a right line behind 

 him, appearing like a tail, and probably serving the same 

 rudder-like office. When he leaves the sea-coast, and traces 

 on wing the courses of the creeks or rivers upwards, he is 

 said to prognosticate rain ; when downwards, dry weather. He 

 is most jealously vigilant and watchful of man, so that those 

 who wish to succeed in shooting the heron must approach him 

 entirely unseen, and by stratagem. The same inducements, 

 however, for his destruction, do not prevail here as in Europe. 

 Our sea-shores and livers are free to all for the amusement of 

 fishing. Luxury has not yet constructed her thousands of fish- 

 ponds, and surrounded them with steel traps, spring guns, 

 and heron snares.* In our vast fens, meadows, and sea- 

 marshes, this stately bird roams at pleasure, feasting on the 

 never-failing magazines of frogs, fish, seeds, and insects with 

 which they abound, and of which he probably considers him- 

 self the sole lord and proprietor. I have several times seen 



* " The heron," says an English writer, " is a very great devourer of 

 fish, and does more mischief in a pond than an otter. People who have 

 kept herons have had the curiosity to number the fish they feed them 

 with into a tub of water, and counting them again afterwards, it has been 

 found that they will eat up fifty moderate dace and roaches in a day. 

 It has been found, that in carp-ponds visited by this bird, one heron 

 will eat up a thousand store carp in a year ; and will hunt them so close, 

 as to let very few escape. The readiest method of destroying this mis- 

 chievous bird is by fishing for him in the manner of pike, with a baited 

 hook. When the haunt of the heron is found out, three or four small 

 roach or dace are to be procured, and each of them is to be baited on a 

 wire, with a strong hook at the end, entering the wire just at the gills, 



