THE BIRDS OF SINGAPORE ISLAND 
s tea ling off quickly th rough a bed of rushes, thirty or forty 
yards frotn me: Jie was a foot or so above the grouiidp and 
went so rapidly, that he appeared to glide throui^fh the rushes 
without touching them. I fired and thinking that I had 
killed him, I went to the spot. It was an isolated bed of 
rushes I had seen him in; the mud beIow% and for some distance 
round was quite bare and hard* so that it would have been 
impossible for the bird to esca])e without being perceived; and 
yet, dead or alive, it was not to be found. After vainly 
searching . . , for a quarter of an hour I gave over the 
quest . , . and was just turning to go, when, behold! 
there stood my Heron on a rccd, no more than eight inches 
from mc, and on a level with my knees. He was perched, 
the body erect, and the point of the tail totiching the reed 
grasped by its feet; the long, slender, tapering neck was held 
stiff, straight and vertically; and the head and back, instead of 
being carried obliquely, were also pointing up. There was not, 
from his feet to the tip of his beak, a perceptible curve or 
inequality, bi:t the whole was the figure, the exact counterpart, 
of a straight, tapering rush, the loose plumage arranged to fill 
inequalities, and the wings pressed into the hollow sides, 
making it impossible to see where the body ended and the neck 
began, or to distinguish head from neck, or beak from head. 
This was, of course, a front view; and the entire under-surface 
of the bird w^as thus displayed, all of a uniform dull yellow, like 
that of a faded rush. I regarded the bird wondedngly for 
some time, but not the least motion did it make. I thought 
it was wounded or paralysed with fear, and placing my hand 
on the point of its beak, forced the head down till it touched 
the back; when I withdrew my hand, up fiew the head, like a 
steel spring, to its first position. I repeated the experiment 
many times with the same result, the very eyes of the bird 
appearing all the time rigid and unwinking, like those of a 
creature in a fit. What wonder that it is so difTiciilt, almost 
impossible, to discover the bird in such an altitude! But how 
happened it that while repeatedly walking round the bird 
through the rushes I had not caught sight of the striped back 
and the broad dark-coloured sides? I asked myself this 
question, and stepped round to get a side view> when, mirabilc 
dictu, I could see nothing but the rush-like front of the bird! 
His motions on the perch, as he turned slowly or quickly 
[9*] 
