28 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



at length catches the eye. When the sedge-bents, 

 which stream over it and serve to screen the sitting 

 bird, are pushed aside a mallard's nest with eggs is 

 disclosed to view. The yellow-blue eggs are quite 

 warm and the mother-duck has evidently only just 

 left them. In the thick sedge-grass with water 

 still over the ankles you pause later with back to the 

 sun to watch the birds circling uneasily overhead. 

 Lifting a foot to advance again, the marsh seems 

 suddenly to explode at the spot on which you in- 

 tended to put it down, and a dark mass lifted an 

 instant in the air falls again in front. It is a second 

 or two before you realize that the object is only a 

 brown duck quacking loudly and wildly flapping 

 an injured wing. 



Instantly as the eye gets back to the spot from 

 which the bird has risen the cause is revealed. It 

 is a sight which makes one feel like a bungler and 

 intruder upon the privacies of life. No wonder the 

 mother duck all but allowed herself to be trodden 

 on. She has been sitting on a nest full of little 

 ones just emerging from the shell. 



All the little ducks save three have freed them- 

 selves from the shells, and some are already so 

 active and so ready to scamper out of the nest 

 that they have to be restrained by hand. But as 

 the mother, still beating her apparently broken 

 wing, passes out of eye-shot quiet is gradually 

 restored. You have heard from the beginning of 

 the instinctive fear of young wild animals for man. 

 But what a libel it proves to be on nature when 

 taken thus at the font. You have read that the 

 young of the mallard, when hatched out with tame 

 ducks by a foster-mother, are inherently wild and 



