22 Mr. John Wood on the 



most of its feathers, and with black and white marking?, 

 the tout ensemhle of which one always admires when a 

 specimen is in hand. As a member of the family of waders 

 that specialise in bills and legs, — the Avocet, for instance, in 

 the former and the Stilt in the other, — the Curlew for more 

 than half the year hardly knows what it is to go dry-shod. 

 Of its length of about 2 j feet, six to seven inches are required 

 for that down-curved crescent-shaped bill commemorated in 

 the generic name of Nuinenius, meaning new moon. That 

 organ is, indeed, a conspicuous feature, stamping the bird 

 with a likeness in outline to the migrant Sacred Ibis, 

 so much figured in ancient Egyptian art as the venerated 

 harbinger of Spring and the precursor of tlie Nile^s beneficent 

 floods. The Ornithologist, however, claims to have an 

 intelligent appreciation of the bill as a kindly device by 

 Mother Nature, bringing its owner within reach of the very 

 retiring small fry that might otherwise escape contributing 

 towards the bill-of-fare. Those are typified by the mud-prawn 

 and razor-bait eager anglers laboriously dig out of the 

 slobbering silt by the river-side, but which the Curlew's bill 

 expertly feels its way to. Not only is that of the right length, 

 but at the tip sensitive nerves converge to guide the bird, in its 

 probing for food, to seize what it cannot see. It thus can 

 track a tiny crab in the ooze and overcome more complicated 

 conditions than those met in the deep thrust of a suu-bird, or 

 sphinx-moth, towards the unchanging position of the nectar 

 in some tubular flower. 



Etymologists differ as to the derivation of the name, but, 

 since there is in the French form of '^ Courlieu'" and the old 

 English one of " Corylewe " quite a good echo of the bird's 

 callj we may assume imitation was the origin. There does 

 not seem to be an Afrikander name, and doubtless this is due 

 to the Ckirlew being seldom seen up country. Our Ornitho- 

 logists, however, report its having looked in, in passing, at 

 Potchefstrom, Newcastle, Aliwal North, near Johannesburg, 

 and a few other places well inland ; and Sir Robert Maxwell 

 mentions in his delightful '' Memories of the Months " having 

 startled a '^ Whaup '■" (its Scotch name) from some rietpan 



