108 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



to its smell and taste when eaten with green peas 

 in their season. 



If I am asked how I escaped from these incon- 

 venient, not to say degrading, associations, the only 

 answer would be that associations of another kind 

 were probably formed at some early period. Perhaps 

 when my infant eyes began to look at the world, 

 when I had no stock of ideas, no prepossessions at 

 all, except with regard to milk, I saw a white duck 

 and was delighted at it. In any case the feeling for 

 its beauty goes far back. I remember some years 

 ago when strolling by the Itchen I stood to admire 

 a white duck floating on the clear current where it is 

 broad and shallow and where the flowering wild 

 musk was abundant. The rich moist green of the 

 plant made the white plumage seem whiter, and the 

 flowers and the duck's beak were both a very beau- 

 tiful yellow. "If," thought I, "the white duck were 

 as rare in England as the white swallow, or even the 

 white blackbird, half the inhabitants of Winchester 

 would turn out and walk to this spot to see and 

 admire so lovely a thing." 



Many and many a time have I stopped in my walk 

 or ride to admire such a sight, but the white ducks 

 seen to-day, floating, sun-flushed, on a blue pool in 

 a green field, had a higher loveliness, a touch of the 

 extra-natural, and served to recall an old tradition 

 of a primitive people concerning the country of the 

 sky, where the dead inhabit, and all trees and flowers 

 abound as on earth, and all animals and birds, in- 

 cluding ducks, but more beautiful than here below. 



