NOTE-BOOK OF A NATURALIST. 233 



Spread his broad nostril to the wind, 

 Listed before, aside, behind. 

 Then couch'd him down beside the hind. 

 And quaked among the mountain fern, 

 To hear that sound so dull and stern. 



When a stag lies with his neck stretched out and his 

 horns lying backward in such a lair, or among other 

 low cover, none but a very experienced stalker is likely 

 to detect him. 



I remember, one very hard winter, passing more than 

 once, in beating over a fallow field, what I at first took 

 for a clod, but which proved to be a partridge frozen to 

 death. As for the young of many birds who make their 

 nests on the ground, their colours so closely resemble the 

 localities in which they are found, that they are hardly 

 to be o])served by any but a very keen eye. Thus White, 

 writing of the stone-curlew (Gharadrius cedicnenius), 

 remarks, that the bird lays its eggs — usually two, never 

 more than three — on the bare ground, without any pro- 

 tection, so that the countryman, in stirring his fallows 

 often destroys them. 



The young (he adds) run immediately from the egg like partridges, 

 &c. ; and are withdrawn to some flinty field by the dam, ^^ here they 

 sculk among the stones, which are their best security ; for their 

 feathers are so exactly of the colour of oiu- grey-spotted flints, that 

 the most exact observer, unless he catches the eye of the young 

 bird, may be eluded.* 



The similarity of colour to that of their haunts, com- 

 bined with the motionless habit above alluded to, serves, 

 then, in the case of the reptiles, the double purpose of 

 concealment for safety and lying in wait for prey, so as 

 to give the victim the least possible warning. Few can 

 see the snake in the grass, and the frogs on which it 

 dines least of all. The sportsman treads on the viper, 

 coiled up on a bright windy day at the edge of the copse, 



* Selborne. Letter XVL 



