IN THE SHETLANDS 65 
duced a deadlock, so that the bird stood on a very 
knife-edge, trembling between a forward and a back- 
ward movement ; and then, too, gradually to come to 
connect the look and bearing of each bird with its 
disposition, to know them, both outwardly and psy- 
chologically, to see them grow into their names that 
grew with them, and have the bold orange-bill, the 
modest grey, the swaggering white bird, the Duchess, 
the Fine Lady, the My Lord Tomnoddy, the Kaiser, 
the Swashbuckler, and so on, all about one, so many 
characters, so many amusing little burlesques of 
humanity—human nature stripped, without its guards, 
disguises, softenings and hypocrisies—all this was 
the solace and beguilement of many a tedious after- 
noon. 
But there exists for some reason, in every town in 
England, a body of men who can do what they like, 
without asking anybody, to the annoyance of every- 
body, though everybody pays for them. One day, 
after an absence, 1 came with my bag of bread as 
usual, but there were no ducks to be fed; all had 
vanished—there was only the uninteresting pond. 
Alarmed, I inquired of the man at the entrance, and 
found that the Cheltenham Corporation had got rid 
of the whole of them on account of their being of 
no particular breed or strain, just ordinary tame 
ducks and no more. Their appearance, the indis- 
criminate diversity of their plumage, their infinite 
variety of colour and pattern, had been against them. 
It had, indeed, made the water gay, and gladdened 
F 
