112 THE RING OF NATURE 



cold, as though to make the fact of death 

 unquestionable. 



But I know that the young snipe are shamming 

 dead, even as their mother shammed hurt as she 

 hobbled away. Or is not that word too light to 

 describe a stratagem of such vital importance ? 

 Is it not even better to say that my approach 

 threw the mother into a real paralysis of fear, 

 a halting between the desire for personal safety 

 and fear for her progeny, that made her actions 

 cancel one another and really almost brought her 

 down from the wing ? If I had chased her, the 

 personal note would have increased at each 

 removal of danger from her chicks, and she would 

 have ended by recovering the full power of her 

 wings. There need then be no conscious affecta- 

 tion that could be described as sham in her 

 case. 



Then the snipe chicks are the children of snipe, 

 with the same sensitive nature, that, when they 

 grow up, will be put by the cosmic force to the 

 same protective use. The family nerves throw 

 them into a trance beyond their control, an almost 

 more than miniature death, perhaps as distressful 

 to them as actual dissolution, and only tolerable 

 to the system because it often saves it from 

 actual death. 



There in the pine tree by the lake is one of the 

 causes that has turned the ailment of the snipe 

 into a means of defence. Two old hooded crows 

 in French-grey and black are wheeling and hovering 



