GREEN-BACKED GALLINULE 169 



sits with rounded shoulders on some stump or dead 

 herbage by the hour together. As its food seems 

 to consist almost entirely of the inner and soft 

 parts of the shoots of reeds and other water-plants 

 amongst which it lives all its days, it does not 

 have to make any special effort to obtain food, and 

 conceivably it may be one of those birds which are 

 on a slow downward grade towards extinction. 

 There can be little doubt but that the matter of 

 food -supply has led many birds to alter their 

 methods of life. In some cases, finding an abund- 

 ance of food ever ready to hand, the use of the 

 wings was abandoned, and with the inevitable 

 result that just as they ceased to fly so the wings 

 ceased growing, till at last they became flightless 

 birds and at the mercy of each and every enemy 

 that might attack them. It may be that think- 

 ing on these things has made the bird melancholy 

 and depressed ; but nothing can save it but " buck- 

 ing up " and using its powers. Mr. Erskine Nicol 

 told me how once, when out shooting, he saw one 

 in a cornfield near a stack ; he went towards it and 

 the bird ran behind the stack ; when he followed, it 

 would not leave the friendly shelter, but by simply 

 running round and round always kept safe. Mr. 

 Nicol at last got tired of this useless chase and 



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