occasioned, it is easier to form an opinion; this
is roughly estimated at between seven and eight
millions of pounds sterling.

HERONS.

HERON is a Greek word, which, meaningless
to Englishmen, pictures to Grecians the bird
which darts its ipill like the head of a spear.
Herons, while building their nests in trees, like
rooks, are as truly wading birds as storks. Most,
although not all, of the wading birds, plovers,
bitterns, cranes, snipes, rails, and herons, have
long beaks, long wings, long legs, and short
tails. When "we twa"—my auld acquaintance
and me—"paidilt in the burn," the practical
difficulties to be overcome were how, by tight
rolling up, we might obtain the greatest possible
length of leg for wading purposes, and reach
the greatest practicable depths, without wetting
our feathers. But the wading birds have the
rolling up, tucking up, and kilting up, done for
them. They are built with long legs: which
are fitted for enduring cold water a long time;
the lower parts of their long legs being plated
with scales. Short tails, however convenient
when wading, are not so well adapted for flying
as long tails; the long legs make up for the want
of long tails, by balancing the bird when flying.
Instead of being tucked up under the body as
the legs of birds generally are, the legs of
herons stretch out behind them. Willughby
says of the herons: "They have very long
necks; their bills also are long, strong, ending
in a sharp point to strike fish, and fetch them
from under stones or brinks; long legs to wade
in rivers and pools of water; very long toes,
especially the hind toe, to stand more firmly in
rivers; large crooked talons, and the middle
serrate on the inside, to hold eels and other
slippery fish the faster, or because they sit on
trees; lean and carrion bodies because of their
great fear and watchfulness." Remembering
the place which Falconry held in the esteem of
royal and noble personages in the middle ages,
and the very peculiar appearance of the heron
in the air, the man might with reason be deemed
a proverbially bad observer of common things
who could not distinguish a hawk from a hernshaw.

Their strong, long, round, pointed bills, it was,
I suppose, which obtained for these birds their
learned name of Arrowheads (Ardeidae). They
are arrowheads with a propensity for darting
their heads into the eyes of their victims.
Herons were reckoned food fit for royal and
noble tables. The fifth Earl of Northumberland,
it appears from the regulations of his
household early in the sixteenth century, made
it a standing rule for principal feasts that a
"hearonswys" be bought for his lordship's own
mess, "so that they be at xiid a pece." They
were valued at the same price as bitterns,
pheasants, curlews, and peacocks. Affording
the nobility both sport for their pastime and a
delicacy for their tables, herons were strictly
preserved; a penalty of twenty shillings being
inflicted upon any person convicted of destroying
their eggs. Their long soft black feathers
decked the caps of Knights of the Garter: and
the crests of the cocks are still used as
ornaments in the East.

Mr. Knox, the author of Ornithological
Rambles in Sussex, was once present when a cast
of falcons brought down a heron. The falconer
and his party concealed themselves in a ditch on
the side of a bog in Ireland, over which they had
observed the herons flying low, on their return
from their feeding-ground. Many flew so near
that the falconer was entreated by his
companions to fly his hawks, but he obstinately
refused, until a heron appeared which his
experience told him presented the conditions of
success. Up flew the heron high into the blue
and the falcons after it, and the falconer and
his party ran far to see them fall, always excepting
those who floundered in the bog. After a
time the heron and the falcons came tumbling
down, like a parachute of feathers. The heron is,
in fact, not formidable in the air. The notion that
the heron can receive the falcon, when he makes
his swoop, upon his beak as on a bayonet or
spear, is a mistake. The heron is not Wilt for
aerial combats, his long neck and long beak
giving too much notice of his hostile intentions
to be suitable for such warfare. But when he
descends to the ground, and makes his instinctive
dart at the eye of his enemy, his attack is
truly dangerous. The falconer no sooner sees
the heron and the falcons struggling on the
ground, than he eagerly runs to protect his
falcons, and after the fight he examines them
anxiously lest they should have sustained fatal
injuries. Men, dogs, and rooks, which have
lost eyes from the arrow-headed birds of the
trees and marshes, are often met with in the
neighbourhoods of heronries.

Royal and baronial persons still preserve
herons. This bird has fallen so entirely out
of general notice, that even ornithologists would
find on inquiry more heronries in the British
islands than they might suppose, since Mr.
Yarrell enumerates nearly fifty of them, and his
list is not complete.

The most picturesque heronry in the British
islands is situated on the river Findhom, in
Morayshire. The broad and deep river has cut
winding paths for itself through soft rocks. The
rocks are wooded to the edges of the cliffs with
large oak and birch trees. Proceeding down the
river beyond the drives of Altyre, every winding
of the river exhibits new beauties of rocks,
water, and woods, with the sea and the mountains
of Sutherland and Caithness in the distance.
On the left side there is a row of very old trees
overhanging the water and skirting a peculiarly
lonely and sequestered meadow, and these trees
are encrusted with the large nests of the herons.
From the wooded cliffs opposite the nests, the
herons can be watched while standing on the
brink of the river waiting for prey, or sitting on
their nests, or feeding their young. "You
incidentally gave me great entertainment," says