When the enemy comes to close quarters, the Heron instinctively throws itself belly up to repel the assault with its long, crooked, cutting claws. Raptorial species possess a similar habit; and the analogous correlation of habit and structure in genera so widely separated is very curious. The Falcon uses its feet to strike, lacerate, and grasp its prey; the Heron to anchor itself firmly to its perch; but for weapons of defence they are equally well adapted, and are employed in precisely the same manner. The Heron, with its great length of neck and legs, its lean unballasted body, large wings, and superabundance of plumage, is the least suited of birds to perch high; yet the structure of the feet renders it perfectly safe for the bird to do so. Thus the Heron is enabled to sit on a smooth enamelled rush or on the summit of a tree, and doze securely in a wind that, were its feet formed like those of other Waders, would blow it away like a bundle of dead feathers. Another characteristic of Herons is that they carry the neck, when flying, folded in the form of the letter S. At other times the bird also carries the neck this way; and it is, indeed, in all long-necked species the figure the neck assumes when the bird reposes or is in the act of watching something below it; and the Heron's life is almost a perpetual watch. Apropos of this manner of carrying the neck, so natural to the bird, is it not the cause of the extreme wariness observable in Herons? Herons are, I think, everywhere of a shy disposition; with us they are the wildest of water-fowl, yet there is no reason for their being so, since they are never persecuted. Birds ever fly reluctantly from danger; and all species possessing the advantage of a long neck, such as the Swan, Flamingo, Stork, Spoonbill, &c., will continue with their necks stretched to their utmost capacity watching an intruder for an hour at a time rather than fly away. But in the Herons it must be only by a great effort that the neck can be wholly unbent; for even if the neck cut out from a dead bird be forcibly straightened and then released, it flies back like a piece of india-rubber to its original shape. Therefore the effort to straighten the neck, invariably the first expression of alarm and curiosity, must be a painful one; and to keep it for any length of time in that position is probably as insupportable to the bird as to keep the arm straightened vertically would be to a man. Thus the Heron flies at the first sight of an intruder, whilst the persecuted Duck, Swan, or other fowl continues motionless, watching with outstretched neck, participating in the alarm certainly, but not enduring actual physical pain.