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Show 630 MR. W. H. HUDSON ON THE HABITS OF HERONS. [Nov. 16, instinct that made its peculiar conformation and imitative colour far more advantageous than they could be of themselves. One day in November 1870, when out shooting, I noticed a little Heron stealing off quickly through a bed of rushes, thirty or forty yards from m e ; he was a foot or so above the ground, and went so rapidly that he appeared to glide through the rushes without touching them. I fired, but afterwards ascertained that in m y hurry I missed m y aim. The bird, however, disappeared at the report; and thinking I had killed him, I went to the spot. It was a small isolated bed of rushes I had seen him in ; the m u d below and for some distance round was quite bare and hard, so that it would have been impossible for the bird to escape without being perceived ; and yet, dead or alive, he was not to be found. After vainly searching and researching through the rushes for a quarter of an hour, I gave over the quest in great disgust and bewilderment, and, after reloading, was just turning to go, when, behold I there stood m y Heron on a reed, no more than eight inches from, and on a level with, m y knee3. H e was perched, the body erect and the point of the tail touching the reed grasped by its feet; the long slender, tapering neck was held stiff, straight and vertically ; and the head and beak, instead of being carried obliquely, were also pointing up. There was not, from his feet to the tip of the beak, a perceptible curve or inequality, but the whole was the figure (the exact counterpart) of a straight tapering rush : the loose plumage arranged to fill inequalities, the wings pressed into the hollow sides, made 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 was thus displayed, all of a uniform dull yellow like that of a faded rush. I regarded the bird wonderingly for some time ; but not the least motion did it make. I thought it was wounded or paralyzed with fear, and, placing m y hand on the point of its beak, forced the head down till it touched the back; when I withdrew m y hand, up flew 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. W h at wonder that it is so difficult, almost impossible, to discover the bird in such an attitude ! 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, mirabile dictu, I could still see nothing but the rush-like front of tbe bird! His motions on the perch as he turned slowly or quickly round, still keeping the edge of the blade-like body before me, corresponded so exactly with m y own that I almost doubted that I had moved at all. N o sooner had I seen the finishing part of this marvellous instinct of self-preservation (this last act making the whole entire), than such a degree of delight and admiration possessed m e as I have never before experienced during m y researches, m u c h as I have conversed with wild animals in the wilderness, and many and perfect as are the in- |