152 BOMBAY DUCKS 



the cat was devotedly attached to the old lady who 

 died, and that it understood the nature of death ; we 

 must further suppose, if we are to credit this absurd 

 story, that the cat knew what a coffin was, could dis- 

 tinguish between it and any other box, and when it saw 

 it, inferred that the remains of the deceased were shut 

 up in it. Further, since the cat screamed the moment 

 it caught sight of the coffin, it must have put two and 

 two together in an incredibly short space of time. 



Of all the disseminators of unnatural history the 

 British poets are the most deserving of censure. 

 Tennyson, Morris, and Sir Edwin Arnold are excep- 

 tions, but all the rest, as Phil Robinson rightly observes, 

 "betray a systematized lack of sympathy with the 

 natural world which is expressed in formulated pre- 

 judices." 



The greatest calamity that can overtake a bird is to 

 fall into the hands of the average British poet. No 

 myth is too nonsensical to be swallowed by that worthy. 

 The bards are quite content to echo all the absurd 

 statements of the ancients. The bird of paradise has no 

 feet, so sleeps on the wing, lays and hatches her eggs in 

 mid-air. The pelican sacrifices her life in order to give 

 her young ones a single meal. How the young fare 

 after the mother's death, we are not told ; presumably 

 the father then " chips in," and after him the uncles and 

 aunts shed their " life blood " in order that the young 

 hopefuls may have a meal. The swan, of course, sings 

 before death. Says Byron : " There, swan-like, let me 

 sing and die." 



All the other common birds receive similar treatment 



