But now, perhaps, you will say that if "fine feathers make fine birds," then beautiful feathers must make beautiful birds, too, and so the White Egret must be a beautiful bird. Oh, yes, he is. You are quite right. I did not mean that he was not a beautiful bird at all. All I meant was that he was not quite so beautiful as the Birds of Paradise and the Humming-birds, and birds like that--birds that look as if they had flown into a jeweller's shop, and then flown out again with all the best part of the jewellery upon them. Whether he is not as beautiful as some of the other birds we have talked about--but I will not say which, for fear of offending them--that I am not quite so sure of; but, at any rate, he is beautiful. [Illustration: THE WHITE EGRET] Oh, yes, he is quite a beautiful bird, is the White Egret; and now I will describe him to you. I shall not have any colours to tell you about, because he is all white--which of course you will have guessed from his name--but you know how beautiful white can be. You will not have forgotten the little Humming-bird who was made still more beautiful than he had been before, by three snowflakes falling upon him. But, with this bird, it is as if the snow had fallen all over him and covered him up, for he is white all over, a beautiful, soft, silky white, as pure and delicate as the snow itself. Only his shape, perhaps, is a little funny--at least you might think so--for he has a pair of long, thin, stilty legs, and a long, thin, snaky neck, and a long, sharp, pointed beak, so that all three of these together make him a tall, thin, stilty bird. "Something like a stork, that is," you will say, for you will have seen pictures of storks, even if you have not seen one alive in the Zoological Gardens--which is a very bad place for him, _I_ think. Well, this bird _is_ something like a stork, but he is a great deal more like a heron, that long-legged, long-necked bird that stands for hours in the water, waiting for a fish to come near it, so that it may catch it and swallow it; for the heron, you know, lives on fish and frogs, and things of that sort.