scarce bird that appeared occasionally in the 

 fall, and that burrowed in the mud for the 

 winter instead of migrating, and all this 

 was chiefly nonsense. 



When the boy took me to see his queer 

 find I called it a woodcock and began to tell 

 about it eagerly, but was stopped short and 

 called a liar for my pains. A wordy war 

 followed, in which Natty Dingle's authority 

 was invoked in vain; and the boy, being 

 bigger than I and in his own yard, drove me 

 away at last for daring to tell him about a 

 bird that his own cat had caught and that 

 his own father had called a blind snipe. He 

 pegged one extra stone after me for saying 

 that there were plenty of them about, only 

 they fed by night like owls, and another 

 stone for shouting back that they did not 

 burrow in the mud like turtles in dry weather, 

 as his oracle had declared. And this untem- 

 pered zeal is very much like what one gener- 

 ally encounters when he runs up against the 

 prejudices of naturalists anywhere. Hear 

 all they say, that the earth is flat, that 

 swallows spend the winter in the mud, that 



