Bill blackish and yellowish; legs greenish; claws brown; eyes yellow.

A Citizen of temperate North America, but a very shy and solitary bird,
who will not be neighborly and is oftener heard than seen in the bogs
where he likes to live alone. He makes a loud noise that sounds like
chopping wood with an axe or driving a stake in the ground with a
mallet; so he is called the Stake-driver by some people, while others
name him Thunder-pumper and Bog-bull. His body is about as big as a
Hen's, and he is sometimes known as Indian Hen, though his very long
beak, neck, and legs are not at all like those of a Hen.

A member of the guild of Wise Watchers, who keeps a sharp lookout for
the reptiles and little fishes he spears with his strong pointed bill,
and places his nest on the ground; the eggs are drab-colored, not pale
green like those of most members of the Heron family.

A BONNET MARTYR AND A BLUE GIANT

"You promised to tell us about four Herons--please, who are the other
two?" asked Dodo, when she had finished writing these tables, and had
buttoned her book into the pocket of the long gray linen apron which the
Doctor had taught both Olive and herself to wear on those excursions,
whether they hunted birds, flowers, or butterflies.

"Boys have pockets--how I wish I was a boy!" Dodo had said, after she
had been at Orchard Farm a couple of days. "So do I," had echoed Olive;
"there is always something to carry, and everything seems either to fall
out of girls' pockets, or to be smashed flat."

"If you will only promise not to turn into boys, I will furnish you with
pockets," the Doctor had said, and he had kept his word as usual.

[Illustration: Snowy Egret Or Bonnet Martyr.]

"Did I say four Herons?" he now asked. "Yes, to be sure; there are two
more that will interest you--the Snowy Egret or Bonnet Martyr, and the
Great Blue Heron or Blue Giant."

"Bonnet Martyr? What a strange name for a bird! Why do you call him
that? Do they live about here?" asked Nat.

"They do not live so far north as this, though they sometimes stray
through the Middle and Northern States. But in the Southern States, and
Florida in particular, they used to live in vast colonies. Now they are
being surely and quickly put out of the world by the cruelty and
thoughtlessness of House People--the particular kind of House People who
wear women's hats and bonnets.

"Once these Egrets covered the southern lowlands like drifting snow--for
they a