Lost British Birds. 
21 
to no bittern, or bird, blit to the demon or spirit of the 
desolate places of the earth. There is, said Bobert Mudie, 
a “ sublimity ” about the bittern. 
In Norfolk and Lincolnshire it was formerly most abun¬ 
dant, and Stevenson tells of marshmen who were not 
satisfied to sit down to their Sunday dinner without a 
roasted bittern on the table. The same writer says : “ For 
at least fifteen or sixteen years, prior to 1866, I believe 
this species had altogether deserted us in the breeding 
season, but in the summer of 1866, the boom of a bittern 
was again heard at Hoveton broad.” Two years later, in 
the summer of 1868, two eggs were found at Upton, and one 
young bird was taken. No later record of their breeding 
exists. But as a migrant, or straggler, the bird still comes 
to our shores, especially in severe winters, but only to perish 
miserably at the hands of man. For at the present time a 
bittern is no sooner seen than shot, and the event, together 
with the name of the local bird-stuffer, who receives the 
