184 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 



possibly he is right. It is the same smart little 

 bird we have at home, and the male has, when 

 showing off, a most attractive appearance, of 

 which it is fully aware, as is shown by its 

 jaunty carriage. Of all duck, this is the quickest 

 off the mark ; how it does it one can hardly see, 

 but it leaves the water in one second, apparently 

 at top speed, as if it had been going for some 

 minutes. As with the Shoveller this duck comes 

 in great numbers to the Cairo Zoological Gardens, 

 and the ready intelligence it shows in remaining 

 in full sight of men and flying close over their 

 heads whilst in the Gardens, and the wary care 

 it shows the moment it is outside the sanctuary, 

 is most interesting. On wall-paintings I am told 

 it is depicted, but I am not certahi that I have 

 ever seen its small form shown ; in the matter 

 of relative size of living and other objects, these 

 old craftsmen were curiously capricious. A notable 

 illustration of this is in the way they portrayed 

 the wives of the heroic Rameses statues, where 

 you will find the lady shown coming up only to 

 the knee-joint of her gigantic lord and master. 

 When they treated royal ladies in this way, it is 

 useless to expect great accuracy in the matter of 

 rendering the various relative sizes of humble water- 



