This bird is singularly grotesque in his appearance, though not without beauty of plumage. With his long, straight, and quadrangular bill, his short and diminutive feet and legs, and his immense head, his plumage of a handsome dusky blue, with a bluish band on the breast and a white collar around the neck,--when this mixture of the grotesque and the beautiful is considered in connection with the singularity of his habits, we need not marvel at the superstitions connected with his history. He sits patiently, like an angler, on a post at the head of a wharf, or on a branch of a tree that extends over the bank, and, leaning obliquely, with extended head and beak, he watches for his finny prey. There, with the light blue sky above him and the dark blue waves beneath, nothing on the surface of the water can escape his penetrating eyes. Quickly, with a sudden swoop, he seizes a single fish from an unsuspecting shoal, and announces his success by the peculiar sound of his rattle. It may not have been observed by all that the most interesting periods or situations for rambling are not those which most abound with exciting scenes and objects. There must be a certain dearth of individual objects that draw the attention, intermingled with occasional remarkable or mysterious sights and sounds, to yield an excursion its greatest interest. The hunter (unless he be a purveyor for the market) understands this philosophy, and knows that there is more pleasure in chasing a single deer or a solitary fox over miles of pasture and moorland, than in hunting where these animals are abundant, and slaughtering them as fast as one can load his gun. The pleasures attending a rural excursion in the winter are founded on this fact, and may be explained by this principle. There, amid the general silence, every sound attracts attention and is accompanied by its echo; and since the trees and shrubs have lost their leafy garniture, every tree and other object has its own distinct shadow, and we fix our attention more easily upon anything that excites our interest than when it is distracted by the confusion of numbers.