196 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



chief interest was in the bones of the larger waterbirds 

 on which the lake-dweller subsisted, and the weapons 

 with which he slew them — the round, hard clay balls 

 which were hurled from slings. 



From the village I rambled on over the bed of the 

 ancient lake to its deeper part, which is still a wet marsh, 

 though partly drained and intersected with hedges and 

 dykes. Here there are large areas of boggy ground so 

 thickly grown over with cotton-grass that at a little 

 distance it looks like an earth covered with snow. 

 Straying in this place, revelling in that wind-waved 

 feathery fairy whiteness all around me, I finally sat down 

 by the water-side to watch and listen. Mallard, moor- 

 hen, and water-rail, the last heard though not seen, and 

 little grebe were there, but no unfamiliar sound came 

 to me from the songsters in the sedges and bulrushes or 

 from the osiers and alders. 



I was perhaps inattentive; mine on this occasion was 

 a wandering mind; I was still suffering from the effect 

 of my interview with Dr. Bulleid; for even the dullest 

 person among us cannot very well spend an hour with 

 an enthusiast without catching something from him — 

 a slight rise in his tepid temperature, a little rose-coloured 

 rash on his skin, which will presently vanish and leave 

 him well again — as sane and healthy a person as he 

 ever was and ever will be to the end of his comfortable, 

 humdrum existence. But just then, with the infection 

 still In me, I was inhabiting two worlds at one and the 

 same time — that dark green marshy world, whitened 

 with cotton-grass, once a great inland lake and before 



