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Instinct is not always inerrant. Nature is wasteful, and plays the game with a free hand. Yet what she loses on one side she gains on another; she is like that least bittern Mr. Frank M. Chapman tells about. Two of the bittern's five eggs had been punctured by the long-billed marsh wren.

To begin with, he was wondering what manner of beast the owner of those saurian-like orbs might be. To go on with, he was hungry, and smelt fish. But though he was looking full at the big bird, he could not see it, which is the bittern's own private little bit of magic.

There are strange birds, too. One, whom you may see in the Zoological Gardens, like a plover with a straight beak and bittern's plumage, from 'The Main, whose business is to walk about the table at meals uttering sad metallic noises and catching flies.

"You needn't trouble me with thanks," it said indifferently, "we didn't do it to save you, but for our own fun. As for that little stupid," it continued, with a nod of the head towards Dot, "her squeals were no more good than the squeak of a tree frog in a Bittern's beak." "But you were very kind," said Dot, "and showed me how to get water to save Kangaroo's life."

Wild fowl, quacking hordes of them, nest in the tulares. Any day's venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his hollow wings. Chill evenings the mallard drakes cry continually from the glassy pools, the bittern's hollow boom rolls along the water paths. Strange and farflown fowl drop down against the saffron, autumn sky.

It met me here a featureless, brimming ditch, and wound away in torpid coils to the monotonous horizon. And now this shrunken city, its edges dead and fallen to decay, these naked levels, where not even a bittern's voice had courage to startle the stillness, filled me, in spite of myself, with a vague apprehensiveness.

"With his heart split in two on the bittern's bill," said the bishop; and down, rolling one over the other, fell bittern and hawk, while William's Norway falcon, smaller of size than the King's, descended rapidly, and hovered over the two. Both were dead. "I accept the omen," muttered the gazing Duke; "let the natives destroy each other!"

Alluding to this bird, Bishop Hall once said: "If a bittern flies over this man's head by night, he will make his will"; whilst Sir Humphry Davy wrote: "I know a man of very high dignity who was exceedingly moved by omens, and who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him 'good luck."

Wild fowl, quacking hordes of them, nest in the tulares. Any day's venture will raise from open shallows the great blue heron on his hollow wings. Chill evenings the mallard drakes cry continually from the glassy pools, the bittern's hollow boom rolls along the water paths. Strange and far-flown fowl drop down against the saffron, autumn sky.

"With his heart split in two on the bittern's bill," said the bishop; and down, rolling one over the other, fell bittern and hawk, while William's Norway falcon, smaller of size than the King's, descended rapidly, and hovered over the two. Both were dead. "I accept the omen," muttered the gazing Duke; "let the natives destroy each other!"