as can well be
imagined."

104. It is still left to question, first, what is meant by a wet
depression?--does the bird actually sit in the water, and are the eggs
under it? and, if not, how is the water kept out? Secondly, is the
floating nest anchored, and how? Looking to other ornithologists for
solution of these particulars, I find nobody else say anything about a
floating nest at all. Bewick describes it as being of a large size, and
composed of a very great quantity of grass and water plants, at least a
foot in thickness, and so placed in the water that the female hatches
her eggs amidst the continual wet in which they were first laid.
Yarrell says only that it is a large flat nest made of aquatic plants;
while Morris finally complicates the whole business by telling us that
the nest is placed often as much as twenty or thirty yards from the
water, that it is composed of short pieces of roots, reeds, rushes, and
flags, and that when dry the whole naturally becomes very brittle.[23]

[23] I hear, from a friend in whose statements I have absolute
confidence, that he has found the eggs of the water-hen laid on a
dead sycamore leaf by the side of a shallow stream, one of the
many brooks near Uxbridge.

105. While, out of my fifteen volumes of ornithology, I can obtain only
this very vague account of the prettiest bird, next to the kingfisher,
that haunts our English rivers, I have no doubt the most precise and
accurate accounts are obtainable of the shapes of her bones and the
sinuosities of her larynx; but about these I am low-minded enough not
to feel the slightest curiosity. I return to Mr. Gould, therefore, to
gather some pleasanter particulars; first, namely, that she has a
winter and summer dress,--in winter olive gray and white, but in
summer, (changing at marriage time) deep olive black, with dark
chestnut chemisette. Infant dabchicks have "delicate rose-colored
bills, harlequin-like markings, and rosy-white aprons." The
harlequin-like markings I should call, rather, agate-like, especially
on the head, where they are black and white, like an onyx. The bodies
look more like a little walnut-shell, or nutmeg with wings to it, or
things that are to be wings, some day.

106. Even when full-grown, the birds never fly much,--never more, says
Morris, "than six or ten feet above the water, and for the most part
trailing their legs in it; but either on the water or under it, every
movement i