THE BITTERN. 
167 
of the bittern may also be from personal observation : — Those 
who have walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented 
rivers must remember a variety of notes from different water-fowl ; 
the loud scream of the wild-goose^ the croaking of the mallard,'^ 
the whining of the lapwing, and the tremulous neighing of the 
jack- snipe. But of all those sounds there is none so dismally hollow 
as the booming of the bittern. It is impossible for words to give 
those who have not heard the evening-call, an adequate idea of its 
solemnity. It is like the interrupted bellowing of a bull, but 
hollower and louder ; and is heard at a mile^s distance, as if issu- 
ing from some formidable being that resided at the bottom of the 
waters. 
Of the five birds here named, the wild-goose and the bittern 
would not now be heard by Goldsmith in Ireland, where he had 
the opportunity of listening to them in his youth. { The former, 
which then bred, wholly ceased to do so long before the bittern^s 
numbers were much lessened. The other tlu’ee species still 
increase in the four quarters of the island, with tlie difference, 
however, of common being substituted for Jack-sni^e in the pas- 
sage extracted. From ^Ghe tremulous neighing'’^ which is men-, 
tioned, it is evident that the writer alludes to the male of the 
referring to tlie bittern, which, though never found here, used — in their youthful days 
— to be not uncommon in the vicinity of Doncaster : — 
“ ‘ There T1 either be rain or else summat warn*. 
When “butter-bumps” sing upo’ potterie car.’ ” — p. 2355. 
* The expression — and by Goldsmith too ! — “ croaking” of the mallard, reminds 
me that the loud croaking of the frogs in the marshes near Navarino, and in other 
parts of Greece, in the spring of 1841, was commonly spoken of on board H.M.S. 
Beacon as the calling of “ Irish ducks.” 1 am not aware how the jesting term ori- 
ginated. 
t The comparison of this bird’s booming to the bellowing of a bull is not altoge- 
ther fanciful. A friend who resided at Youghal in his youth, when about 13 or 14 
years of age, set out one evening with several other boys to take a particular walk ; 
from which, however, they hastily fled homewards on hearing, as they thought, the 
roaring of a bull in the direction they were going. The next morning they learned 
from the gamekeeper, to whom the dilference between booming and bellowing was 
known, and who had heard the bird, that the cause of their alarm had only been a 
bittern. The name Botaurus (applied generally to bitterns) must, we presume, have 
been given on account of the resemblance of the bird’s cry to the roaring of a bull. 
j; In very rethed haunts the bittern may still occasionally boom and breed in this 
island. 
