Io THE BIRD WATCHER 
such a splendid dese men in “ The Betrothed,” that 
delightful work which an obtuse critic and publisher 
(lun vaut bien autre very often) almost bullied its 
author into discontinuing. The victory is by no 
means always to the robber bird, and I believe that if 
a tern only persevere long enough it has nothing to 
fear, for, as in the case of the black-headed gull and 
the peewit, with much threatening, there is never, or, 
to be on the safe side, very rarely, an actual assault. 
It almost seems as if this logical sequence of what 
has gone before had dropped into desuetude, and that 
the skua, from having long been accustomed to 
succeed by the show of violence only, had become in- 
capable of proceeding beyond the show. Why, if 
this were not the case, should he always leave a bird 
that holds out beyond a certain time? It is not that 
he is outstripped in the chase, for the skua’s activity 
and powers of flight have always seemed to me to be 
sufficient to overtake any bird of his own size, how- 
ever swift, with whom he has piratical relations. Of 
his own size, or something approaching to it, for 
I have seen him altogether baffled by the smaller 
turns and evasions of such a comparatively feeble 
flyer as the rock-pipit. But this was out of the 
ordinary way of his profession. The rock-pipit 
carried nothing, and, even if he had done, it would 
have been too insignificant for the skua’s attention. 
Either amusement or murder—or the amusement of 
murder, which is felt by birds as well as men—must 
have been the object here, nor does this contravene 
