A BONNET MARTYR AND A BLUE GIANT
"You promised to tell us about four Herons—please, who are the other two?" asked Dodo, when she had finished writing these tables, and had buttoned her book into the pocket of the long gray linen apron which the Doctor had taught both Olive and herself to wear on those excursions, whether they hunted birds, flowers, or butterflies.
"Boys have pockets—how I wish I was a boy!" Dodo had said, after she had been at Orchard Farm a couple of days. "So do I," had echoed Olive; "there is always something to carry, and everything seems either to fall out of girls' pockets, or to be smashed flat."
"If you will only promise not to turn into boys, I will furnish you with pockets," the Doctor had said, and he had kept his word as usual.
"Did I say four Herons?" he now asked. "Yes, to be sure; there are two more that will interest you—the Snowy Egret or Bonnet Martyr, and the Great Blue Heron or Blue Giant."
"Bonnet Martyr? What a strange name for a bird! Why do you call him that? Do they live about here?" asked Nat.
"They do not live so far north as this, though they sometimes stray through the Middle and Northern States. But in the Southern States, and Florida in particular, they used to live in vast colonies. Now they are being surely and quickly put out of the world by the cruelty and thoughtlessness of House People—the particular kind of House People who wear women's hats and bonnets.
"Once these Egrets covered the southern lowlands like drifting snow—for they are beautifully white. In the nesting season, when many birds are allowed some special attraction in the way of plumage, bunches of long, slender, graceful plumes grow on their backs between the shoulders and curl up over the tail.