274 BIRDS AND MAN 



of not seeing them ; now I was compelled to look at 

 these. There were photographs, little china vases 

 and cups with boys or cupids, and things of that kind ; 

 these I did not regard ; my whole attention was 

 directed to a pair of glass -fronted cases and the 

 living creatures in them. They were not really 

 alive, but dead and stuffed and set up in lifelike 

 attitudes, and one was a squirrel, the other a green 

 woodpecker. The squirrel with his back to his 

 neighbour sat up on his mossy wood, his bushy tail 

 thrown along his back, his two Uttle hands grasping 

 a hazel-nut, which he was in the act of conveying 

 to his mouth. The green woodpecker was placed 

 vertically against his branch, his side towards his 

 neighbour, his head turned partly round so that he 

 looked directly at him with one eye. That wide-open 

 white glass eye and the whole attitude of the bird, 

 with his wings half open and beak raised, gave him 

 a wonderfully alert look, so that after regarding him 

 fixedly for some time I began to imagine that, 

 despite the old dead dusty look of the feathers, there 

 was something of life still remaining in him and that 

 he really was watching his neighbour with the nut 

 very intently. 



Why, of course he was alive — alive and speaking 

 to the squirrel ! I could hear him distinctly. The 



