Page:Natural History, Birds.djvu/278

Rh and some other vegetable substances. It is chiefly during the night that the Bittern feeds; by day he remains skulking among the reeds or coarse weeds of the marsh, or river-margin, and is not easily flushed. On the approach of night he emerges from his retreat, and rising on the wing soars in spiral circles to a great height, uttering, as he goes, his hollow boom. Goldsmith's description of this sound, to which superstition was wont to attach somewhat of an unearthly character, is poetical and interesting, the rather because he seems to speak from observation. "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. But of all those sounds there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the Bittern. It is impossible for words to give those, who have not heard this evening call, an adequate idea of its solemnity. 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." And he adds, "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. I do not speak ludicrously; but if any person in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; but if nobody happened to die, the