Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/277

264 procured in Sweden, Barbary, South Africa, Siberia, Bengal, and Japan, do not appreciably differ from each other.

The Bittern is a voracious feeder: small mammalia, birds, and fishes, alternate with frogs, newts, slugs, and insects, to satisfy his appetite; and the former are not always of the smallest. Sir William Jardine has found a Water Rail whole in the stomach of one; and from that of another, Mr. Yarrell has taken the bones of a pike of considerable size; and in a third instance a Water Rail whole, and six small fishes. In Graves's "British Birds," it is stated that in one dissected in 1811, the intestines were distended with the remains of four eels, several newts, a short-tailed field-mouse, three frogs, two buds of the water-lily,