Ornithological and Other Oddities 



joke on him by substituting fine salt for powdered 

 sugar without his knowledge, but he never failed 

 to distinguish the two before tasting, which argued 

 in him a power of scent far superior to our own 

 at any rate. 



The duck tribe themselves have always been 

 credited with a keen sense of smell by decoymen, 

 whose practical experience ought to go for some- 

 thing ; they certainly advocate burning a sod of 

 peat when the wind blows towards the fowl, to 

 avoid the carriage of the human scent in their 

 direction. And St. John, in that delightful book, 

 " Natural History and Sport in Moray," says that 

 he has constantly seen wildfowl swim towards him 

 as he lay in ambush, without the slightest suspicion 

 until they came directly to windward, when they 

 would rise in as much alarm as if he had stood up 

 in full view. He had had a similar experience 

 with geese on many occasions, and he gives in 

 another passage a case in which ducks were ap- 

 parently guided to their food by scent. In a 

 year when potato disease was prevalent, he had 

 had a heap of the half-rotten tubers put partly 

 underground, and then covered over with a good 

 thickness of earth, as being too bad even for 

 the pigs. Nevertheless, some domesticated wild 

 ducks had scented them out, and dug into the 

 heap in all directions, leaving their corn for this 

 very foul fare. Unless the ducks had simply 



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