That fanciful blockhead, the Count de Buffon--for he was a most almighty blockhead when he set himself drawing on his imagination for facts--with his usual eloquent absurdity, describes the species as “exhibiting the picture of wretchedness, anxiety, and indigence; condemned to struggle perpetually with misery and want; sickened with the restless cravings of a famished appetite;” a description so ridiculously untrue, that were it possible for these birds to comprehend it, it would excite the risibility of the whole tribe.
If the count had seen the Quawks, as I did, at their high jinks, by the Hackensack, he would have scarce written such folly; and had he been a little more of a true philosopher, and thorough naturalist, he would have comprehended that whatsoever being the Universal Creator hath created unto any end--to that end he adapted him, not in his physical structure only, but in his instincts, his appetites, his tastes, his pleasures and his pains; and that to the patient Bittern, motionless on his mud-bank, that watch is as charming, as is the swift pursuit of the small bird to the falcon, of the rabbit to the fox, of the hare to the greyhound, of all the animals devoured to all the devourers; and that his frog diet is as dear to _Ardea Lentiginosa_, as his flower dew to the humming-bird, or his canvas-backs, in the tea-room, to an alderman of Manhattan.
As for the Bittern starving, eat a fat one in a pie, and you’ll be a better judge of that probability, than any Buffon ever bred in France; and as for all the rest--it is just French humbug.
At another opportunity, I may speak of others of this interesting tribe. Sportsmen rarely go out especially to hunt them, except in boats, as described by Mr. Giraud, but in snipe and duck-shooting in the marshes they are constantly flushed and shot.
Pointers and setters will both stand them steadily, and cocking spaniels chase them with ardor. Their flight is slow and heavy, and their tardy movements and large size render them an easy mark even to a novice. They are not a hardy bird, as to the bearing off shot; for the loose texture of their feathers is more than ordinarily penetrable, and a light charge of No. 8, will usually bring them down with certainty.