THE GADWALL 287 



any means plentiful there, although it is practically 

 unmolested by sportsmen. 



No surging stream runs through the haunt of 

 this duck, but instead there worms its way sadly 

 through the " brecks " and marshes as though it 

 were too great an exertion to trickle, because 

 weighed down by a submerged wilderness of 

 sodden weeds an almost lifeless current. Here 

 the low banks bristle with tall razor-edged sedges 

 and flags, sections of which have been laid flat by 

 successive gusts of wind and sheets of rain ; there, 

 well-grown heath shrouds the river-edge ; there 

 again, jungle-like osier-beds, dotted with immense 

 hassocks of sword-grass, and dashed with pliant- 

 bodied alders and poplars, rudely intrude on the 

 sanctity of the stream, in many spots forming 

 quaking islets lying between two channels of water. 

 These are real pitfalls for the unwary, since 

 innumerable pools full of black slime crop up all 

 too frequently in the already treacherous swamp ; 

 while, to make matters worse, many of the trees, 

 having been felled but abandoned, or else having 

 died a natural death from the venom of the wind, 

 interlace, cross, and criss-cross in such a way as 

 to present a formidable barrier to the prospecting 

 ornithologist. A further irritating point is that the 

 banks of these streams are usually so low that a 

 comparatively sober rainfall causes a tolerable flood ; 

 while a deluge of rain sends the waters fairly 

 gushing over the outlying country, in springtime 



