When driven up the bird flies eighty or a hundred yards away, and drops again amongst the rushes; it is difficult to flush it a second time, and a third time it is impossible. A curious circumstance is that where it finally settles it can never be found. As I could never succeed in getting specimens when I wanted them, I once employed some Gaucho boys, who had dogs trained to hunt young Ducks, to try for this little Heron. They procured several specimens, and said that without the aid of their dogs they could never succeed in finding a bird, though they always marked the exact spot where it alighted. This I attributed to the slender figure it makes, and to the colour of the plumage so closely assimilating to that of the dead yellow and brown-spotted rushes always found amongst the green ones; but I did not know for many years that the bird possessed a marvellous instinct that made its peculiar conformation and imitative colour far more advantageous than they could be of themselves. One day in November 1870, when out shooting, I noticed a Variegated Heron stealing off quickly through a bed of rushes thirty or forty yards from me; he was a foot or so above the ground, and went so rapidly that he appeared to glide through the rushes without touching them. I fired, but afterwards ascertained that in my hurry I missed my aim. The bird, however, disappeared at the report; and thinking I had killed him, I went to the spot. It was a small isolated bed of rushes I had seen him in; the mud below and for some distance round was quite bare and hard, so that it would have been impossible for the bird to escape without being perceived; and yet, dead or alive, he was not to be found. After vainly searching and researching through the rushes for a quarter of an hour I gave over the quest in great disgust and bewilderment, and, after reloading, was just turning to go, when, behold! there stood my Heron on a reed, no more than eight inches from, and on a level with, my knees. He was perched, the body erect, and the point of the tail touching the reed grasped by its feet; the long slender tapering neck was held stiff, straight and vertically; and the head and beak, instead of being carried obliquely, were also pointing up. There was not, from his feet to the tip of his beak, a perceptible curve or inequality, but the whole was the figure (the exact counterpart) of a straight tapering rush: the loose plumage arranged to fill inequalities, and the wings pressed into the hollow sides, made it impossible to see where the body ended and the neck began, or to distinguish head from neck or beak from head. This was, of course, a front view; and the entire under surface of the bird was thus displayed, all of a uniform dull yellow, like that of a faded rush. I regarded the bird wonderingly for some time; but not the least motion did it make. I thought it was wounded or paralyzed with fear, and, placing my hand on the point of its beak, forced the head down till it