186 THE BIRD WATCHER 
reveals itself; not to@®ome few merely which may 
seem, at first sight, to be in opposition to these, but, 
looked at more closely, are seen to be sequences only, 
quite reconcilable with them, and not obstructing 
them in any way. Ina word, we must think of the 
stream and flow of the river, not of some eddies in it, 
or a back-wash here and there. Though it does not 
seem to be, yet the water that makes these is really 
going the way that the stream is, and our “noblest 
numbers,” when closely analysed, are found to be 
“ sculduddery ” after all. 
Es tanzen zwolf Klosterjungfraun herein 
Die schielende Kupplerin fuhret den Reihn 
Es folgen zwolf liisterne Pfaffelein schon 
Und pfeifen ein Schandlied im Kirchenton. 
But can I be quite sure that it was a strange 
guillemot, and not one of the two parents, that 
acted that little scene with the chick which I have 
described? It is easy, certainly, as I know by ex- 
perience, for a bird to go off the ledge without one’s 
noticing it—even under one’s very nose—if one’s eye 
is not actually on it all the time, and that, I suppose, 
mine was not. Again, the plain parent has just made 
a very quick return with another fish, though not, 
I think, quite so quick as the other one would have 
been, had it been he and not a stranger bird that 
I had seen on the ledge all the while. All I can say 
is that it certainly looked like what I supposed was 
the case, and I feel pretty sure that it was so; but 
I have never seen such a thing before, and it is more 
