io8 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



while her husband is fattening the pigs. If any pleasing 

 memories or associations connect themselves with it 

 they are not of an aesthetic character: they refer to the 

 duck without its feathers, to its smell and taste when 

 eaten with green peas in their season. 



If I am asked how I escaped from these inconvenient, 

 not to say degrading, associations, the only answer 

 would be that associations of another kind were prob- 

 ably 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 beautiful 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 Win- 

 chester 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 



