specimens predominated; but possibly that was because they were so much
more conspicuous. Sunlight favors the white feather; no other color
shows so quickly or so far. If you are on the beach and catch sight of a
bird far out at sea,--a gull or a tern, a gannet or a loon,--it is
invariably the white parts that are seen first. And so the little white
heron might stand never so closely against the grass or the bushes on
the further shore of the river, and the eye could not miss him. If he
had been a blue one, at that distance, ten to one he would have escaped
me. Besides, I was more on the alert for white ones, because I was
always hoping to find one of them with black legs. In other words, I was
looking for the little white egret, a bird concerning which, thanks to
the murderous work of plume-hunters,--thanks, also, to those good women
who pay for having the work done,--I must confess that I went to Florida
and came home again without certainly seeing it.

The heron with which I found myself especially taken was the Louisiana;
a bird of about the same size as the little blue, but with an air of
daintiness and lightness that is quite its own, and quite indescribable.
When it rose upon the wing, indeed, it seemed almost _too_ light, almost
unsteady, as if it lacked ballast, like a butterfly. It was the most
numerous bird of its tribe along the river, I think, and, with one
exception, the most approachable. That exception was the green heron,
which frequented the flats along the village front, and might well have
been mistaken for a domesticated bird; letting you walk across a plank
directly over its head while it squatted upon the mud, and when
disturbed flying into a fig-tree before the hotel piazza, just as the
dear little ground doves were in the habit of doing. To me, who had
hitherto seen the green heron in the wildest of places, this tameness
was an astonishing sight. It would be hard to say which surprised me
more, the New Smyrna green herons or the St. Augustine sparrow-hawks,