TOO About the Feathered Folk. 



to the other side, and put up their 

 small beaks against the bank or the 

 grasses, and so lay perdu until the 

 coast was clear, and I taken my 

 alarming self away. But I must say 

 the thing was cleverly managed. 

 No conjurer could have done the 

 trick more neatly. 



Perhaps I ought not to write here 

 about Teals, for they are not cliff- 

 birds, even in the sense that Eider- 

 ducks are. They love marshy land, 

 and haunt fresh-water lakes close to 

 the sea ; they gather about the 

 oozy shores of Uist and the Outer 

 Hebrides, and it is only very oc- 

 casionally they come to breed in 

 Canna. 



It is difficult to curb one's pen 

 when one is writing of birds, the 

 subject is so full of charming things. 

 But, perhaps, mere descriptions of 

 plumage is apt to be dull reading, 

 so I have abstained from attempting 

 that sort of thing here. Yet I hope 



