NOTES BY RURICOLA. 



501 



weed, the Frenchman's darling for food, perhaps, or for concealment. 

 In the spring, the gardener was continually missing the blossoms of a 

 tuft of hepaticas, which, as they successively flowered, were carried off, 

 nothing but the flower-stalks remaining. On carefully watching for the 

 plunderers, he discovered them to be the water-hens, whose propensity 

 for flowers, however, does not appear to have been observed by him in 

 other instances : but lis has noticed them feeding luxuriously on plums 

 that had fallen from the tree. 



I have just availed myself of the opportunity of being at this place to 

 visit the Marquis of Downshire's heronry, which I mentioned in a former 

 letter, F. N. M., page 320. But although his lordship's ponds are 

 enlivened by numerous wild ducks, bald-coots, water-hens, &c, we 

 could discover only one or two herons. They return hither early every 

 spring for building and breeding, in March, I understand, and forsake 

 the place in the autumn, about the end of August, for the sea, leaving 

 behind them, as an old labourer near the spot told me, one, two, or perhaps 

 three birds to " keep the ground," or, as another expressed himself, 

 " to guard the place," till their return the following spring. Whether 

 or not this opinion be correct, I am not able to say : but it seems to be 

 the opinion generally prevalent here j at all events the persons who 

 entertain it, speak positively to the fact of a heron or two being seen 

 " now and again " about the heronry during the absence of the great 

 body of their companions. There is a fancy also that the same sen- 

 tinels do not remain throughout the winter, but that they relieve each 

 other by turns. The grounds of this do not appear. 



Under the trees, and beside the water, we observed a very beautiful 

 fungus, which I mention for a reason to be specified presently. The 

 pileus is circular and slightly convex, becoming gradually flatter, and 

 in the end concave like a bowl, when in a more advanced stage. The 

 diameter of the pileus is, as near as possible, six inches, and the stem 

 rises to about five inches. The colour of the upper surface of the 

 pileus a bright crimson, covered all over here and there with yellowish 

 incrustating spots or blotches of angular irregular forms, at nearly equal 

 distances from each other, of about a quarter of an inch ; the under 

 surface of a rich cream colour. My acquaintance with cryptogamous 

 plants does not suffice for giving a name to this, and I have no botanical 

 work at hand^to refer to : but perhaps the foregoing description may 

 identify the plant to your botanical readers. The circumstance which 

 especially causes me to mention it is this: — For the convenience of 

 making a drawing of it, the fungus had been lodged in an empty water 



