seeming as if she was just flushed from hatching, while she is then probably a hundred yards from the nest. Thus she flies, with great clamour and anxiety whining and screaming round the invaders, striking at them with her wings, and fluttering as if she were wounded. To add to the deceit, she appears still , more clamorous as more remote from the nest. If she sees them very near, she then seems to be quite unconcerned, and her cries cease, while her terrors are really augmenting. If there be dogs, she flies heavily at a little distance before them, as if maimed; still vociferous and still bold, but never offering to move towards the quarter where her treasure is deposited. The dog pursues in hopes every moment of seizing the parent, and by this means actually loses the young; for the cunning bird, when she has thus drawn him off to a proper distance, then puts forth her powers, and leaves her astonished pursuer to gaze at the rapidity of her flight. The eggs of all these birds are highly valued by the luxurious; they are boiled hard, and thus served up without any further preparation.

As the young of this class are soon hatched, so, when excluded, they quickly arrive at maturity. They run about after the mother as soon as they leave the egg, and being covered with a thick down, want very little of that clutching which all birds of the poultry kind, that follow the mother, indispensably require. They come to their adult state long before winter, and then flock together till the breeding season returns, which for a while dissolves their society.

As the flesh of almost all these birds is in high estimation, so many methods have been contrived for taking them. That used in taking the ruff seems to be most advantageous; and it may not be amiss to describe it, The Ruff, which is the name of the male, the Reeve that of the female, is taken in nets about forty

HISTORY OF

yards long, and seven or eight feet high. These birds are chiefly found in Lincolnshire and the isle of Ely, where they come about the latter end of April, and disappear about Michaelmas. The male of this bird, which is known from all others of the kind by the great length of the feathers round his neck, is yet so various in his plumage, that it is said no two ruffs were ever seen totally of the same colour. The nets in which these are taken are supported by sticks, at an angle of near forty-five degrees, and placed either on dry ground, or in very shallow water, not remote from reeds: among these the fowler conceals himself, till the birds, enticed by a stale or stuffed bird, come under the nets: he then, by pulling a string, lets them fall, and they are taken; as are godwits, knots, and gray plover, also in the same manner. When these birds are brought from under the net, they are not killed immediately, but fattened for the table with bread and milk, hemp-seed, and sometimes boiled wheat; but if expedition be wanted, sugar is added, which will make them a lump of fat in a fortnight's time. They are kept, as observed before, in a dark room; and judgment is required in taking the proper time for killing them, when they are at the highest pitch of fatness; for if that is neglected, the birds are apt to fall away. They are reckoned a very great delicacy: they sell for two shillings, or half a crown a piece; and are served up to the table with the train, like woodcocks, where we will leave them.

CHAPTER XI.

OF THE WATER-HEN AND THE COOT.

BEFORE we enter upon water fowls, properly so called, two or three birds claim our attention, which

seem to form the shade between the web-footed tribe and those of the crane kind. These partake rather of the form than the habits of the crane; and, though furnished with long legs and necks, rather swim than wade. They cannot properly be called web-footed; nor yet are they entirely destitute of membranes, which fringe their toes on each side, and adapt them for swimming. The birds in question are, the Water Hen and the Bald Coot.

These birds have too near an affinity not to be ranked in the same description. They are shaped entirely, alike, their legs are long, and their thighs partly bare; their necks are proportionable, their wings short, their bills short and weak, their colour black, their foreheads bald and without feathers, and their habits are entirely the same. These, however, naturalists have thought proper to range in different classes, from very slight distinctions in their figure. The water-hen weighs but fifteen ounces; the coot twenty-four. The bald part of the forehead in the coot is black; in the water-hen it is of a beautiful pink colour. The toes of the water hen are edged with a straight membrane; those of the coot have it scolloped and broader.

The differences in the figure are but slight, and those in their manner of living still less. The history of the one will serve for both. As birds of the crane kind are furnished with long wings, and easily change place, the water-hen, whose wings are short, is obliged to reside entirely near those places where her food lies: she cannot take those long journeys that most of the crane kind are seen to perform; compelled by her natural imperfections, as well perhaps as by inclination, she never leaves the side of the pond or the river in which she seeks for provision. Where the stream is selvaged with sedges, or the pond edged with shrubby trees, the water-hen

VOL. IV.D

is generally a resident there: she seeks her food along the grassy banks, and often along the surface of the water. With Shakspeare's Edgar, she drinks the green mantle of the standing pool, or at least seems to prefer those places where it is seen. Whether she makes pond weed her food, or hunts among it for water-insects, which are found there in great abundance, is not certain. I have seen them when pond-weed was taken out of their stomach. She builds her nest upon low trees and shrubs, of sticks® and fibres, by the water side. Her eggs are sharp at one end, white, with a tincture of green spotted with red. She lays twice or thrice in a summer; her young ones swim the moment they leave the egg, pursue their parent, and imitate all her manners. She rears; in this manner, two or three broods in a season; and when the young are grown up, drives them off to shift for themselves.*

she

As the coot is a larger bird, it is always seen in larger streams, and more remote from mankind. The water-hen seems to prefer inhabited situations: she keeps near ponds, moats, and pools of water near gentlemen's houses; but the coot keeps in rivers, and among rushy margined lakes. It there makes a nest of such weeds as the stream supplies, and lays them among the reeds, floating on the surface, and rising and falling with the water. The reeds among which it is built keep it fast; so that it is seldom, washed into the middle of the stream. But if this happens, which is sometimes the case, the bird sits in her nest, like a mariner in his boat, and steers with her legs her cargo into the nearest harbour: there, having attained her port, she continues to sit in great tranquillity, regardless of the impetuosity of the current; and though the water penetrates her nest, she hatches her eggs in that wet condition.

The water-hen never wanders; but the coot some