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handsomest is the Wood Duck, who builds in trees at 

 Sorel, at Lake Erie, and other places : he is indeed^ 

 facile princeps. Those feathered, slim gentry mounted 

 on stilts, you recognize as pertaining to the tribe of the 

 Waders ; the Bittern you all have seen ; many of you 

 may not have viewed before this pretty little species,, 

 called the Least Bittern. 



There stands next, the Night Heron, or Qua Bird :: 

 have you ever observed how those two long feathers,, 

 which grow out of the back of his head, fit in one 

 another as in a groove ? You may have read, in Charle- 

 voix and Boucher, that two varieties of Cranes visited 

 Canada, the White and the Brown Crane. Linnaeus 

 and Temminck have christened one of the species 

 Grus Canadensis ; and still the Crane is a Western 

 bird, and ought not to visit our arctic latitudes 

 except possibly when it migrates from Florida to the 

 Arctic wilds, for the incubation of its eggs and rearing 

 of the young. An island, once dear to sportsmen, thirty- 

 six miles lower than Quebec, bears the name of Crane 

 Island. You have not forgotten the mention Horace 

 makes of the migrating Crane, Gruem advenam. And 

 shall I relate to you the nice story Herodotus tells of 

 the manner in which the death of Ibycus, the poet, was 

 avenged by a flock of Cranes ? You will then under- 

 stand why the muse-loving Greeks had such a venera- 

 tion for Cranes : 



" The lyric, Ibycus of Ehegium, went to dispute at 

 the Olympic Games the prize of poetry : he came on 

 foot, with no other companion than his lyre, on which, 

 he occasionally struck a few soul-stirring notes. At 

 the close of his journey, musing, he lost his way in the 

 forest. Two men rushed out of the wood and struck 

 him. The poet fell to the earth, and cast an expiring 

 glance towards the setting sun. At that awful moment, 

 he saw a flock of Cranes sailing past : 'Winged trav- 

 ellers,' said he, in an expiring breath, ' behold me ! — 

 make known the assassins of Ibycus !.' The brigands- 



