Whatever terror it may inspire among the simple, its flesh is greatly in esteem among the luxurious. night-raven had foretold it but if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or a sheep gave completion to the prophecy. I do not speak ludicrously but if any person in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village they considered it as the presage of some sad event and generally found or made one to succeed it. It cannot be, therefore, from its voracious appetites, but its hollow boomb, that the bittern is held in such detestation by the vulgar. In short, the heron is lean and cadaverous, subsisting chiefly upon animal food the bittern is plump and fleshy, as it feeds upon vegetables when more nourishing food is wanting. The heron feeds its young for many days the bittern in three days leads its little ones to their food. The heron lays four eggs the bittern generally seven or eight, of an ash-green colour. The heron builds with sticks and wool the bittern composes its simpler habitation of sedges, the leaves of water-plants and dry rushes. As the heron builds on the tops of the highest trees, the bittern lays its nest in a sedgy margin, or amidst a tuft of rushes. in the midst of reeds and marshy places, and living upon frogs, insects, and vegetables and though so nearly resembling the heron in figure, yet differing much in manners and appetites. It is a retired timorous animal, concealing itself This bird, though of the heron-kind, is yet neither so destructive nor so voracious. But, though its boomings are always performed in solitude, it has a scream which is generally heard upon the seizing its prey, and which is sometimes extorted by fear. This call it has never been heard to utter when taken or brought up in domestic captivity it continues under the control of man a mute forlorn bird, equally incapable of attachment or instruction. When its retreats among the sedges are invaded, when it dreads or expects the approach of an enemy, it is then perfectly silent. This is a call it never gives but when undisturbed and at liberty. It hides in the sedges by day, and begins its call in the evening, booming six or eight times, and then discontinuing for ten or twenty minutes to renew the same sound. The fact is, that the bird is sufficiently provided by nature for this call and it is often heard where there are neither reeds nor waters to assist its sonorous invitations. that serves as a pipe for swelling the note above its natural pitch while others, and in this number we find Thomson the poet, imagine that the bittern puts its head under water, and then violently blowing produces its boomings. The common people are of opinion, that it thrusts its bill into a reed These bellowing explosions are chiefly heard from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn and, however awful they may seem to us, are the calls to courtship, or of connubial felicity.įrom the loudness and solemnity of the note, many have been led to suppose, that the bird made use of external instruments to produce it, and that so small a body could never eject such a quantity of tone. Its wind-pipe is fitted to produce the sound for which it is remarkable the lower part of it dividing into the lungs is supplied with a thin loose membrane, that can be filled with a large body of air and exploded at pleasure. It differs from the heron chiefly in its colour, which is in general of a paleish yellow, spotted and barred with black. The bird, however, that produces this terrifying sound is not so big as an heron, with a weaker bill, and not above four inches long. It is like the interrupted bellowing of a bull, but hollower and louder, and is heard at a mile's distance, as if issuing from some formidable being that resided at the bottom of the waters. It is impossible for words to give those who have not heard this evening-call an adequate idea of its solemnity.
But of all those sounds, there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the 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. This material was created by the Text Creation Partnership in partnership with ProQuest's Early English Books Online, Gale Cengage's Eighteenth Century Collections Online, and Readex's Evans Early American Imprints. Of Cartilaginous Flat-Fish, or the Ray Kind. Of Cartilaginous Fishes of the Shark Kind.
Of the Dolphin, the Grampus, and the Porpus, with their Varieties. Of the Whale, properly so called, and its Varieties.
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