ter's living by growing them, without losing
his life. They are the only kind of feathers that should ever be worn
for ornament."

"Has the Great Blue Heron pretty feathers like a Bluebird?" asked Nat,
who felt sorry for the fate of the Egrets, but did not like to show it
and so tried to turn the subject.

"He is of a slate-gray color, which you might not think blue at all,
and he too wears fine plumes, on his head, breast, and back. He is the
largest bird of our hundred, being quite as tall as you are, Miss Dodo.
If you ever see one of these birds standing on the edge of the mill
pond, you will never forget it; for it does not seem like an American
bird, but rather like a visitor from strange lands. You may imagine it
to be an Egyptian princess in disguise, waiting for a barge to come down
the river, rowed by black slaves and conveying a prince all glittering
with jewels, who is bringing a ring cut with mystic letters to break the
spell--as such things are managed in fairy tales.

[Illustration: Blue Heron.]

"This Blue Heron, you will find, has no sweeter voice than his
night-flying cousin, and, like the latter, nests in colonies in the
trees; but afterward he travels about alone, as the Bittern does."

The Snowy Egret

(The Bonnet Martyr.)

Length about two feet.

Pure white all over, with a bunch of many long slender plumes growing
between the shoulders, and shorter ones on the head and neck, in the
nesting season. Feet and legs black. Toes yellow. Bill black and yellow.

A Citizen of temperate and tropical America.

A member of the guild of Wise Watchers, whose food and habits are the
same as those of most other Herons, and who, if he does us no special
good service, is perfectly innocent, and should never be butchered to
make a woman's Easter holiday bonnet.

He has a larger brother called the American White Egret, as pure white
as himself, but three feet or more instead of only two feet long, with
the plumes hanging down over his tail instead of curled up, and none
growing on his head.

The Great Blue Heron

(Or Blue Giant)

Length about four feet.

Plumage mostly slate-gray or bluish-ash, but black and white on the head
and each side of the breast, and chestnut on the bend of the wing. A
crest on the back of the head, a fringe of long feathers at the root of
the neck in front, and another on the back in the breeding season.
Feathers on upper part of the legs reddish-brown, the bare scaly