HAUNTS OF THE OTTER 49 



him at his work, and entered the swampy alder copse. 

 A few oaks, ashes, willows, and aspens are there ; 

 but it is always called the alder copse. The ground 

 here is, as a matter of course, peat bog. The floods 

 have worn great hollows and rifts in all directions ; 

 and narrow, shallow streams run through it to fall 

 in the river again farther on. Here and there great 

 tree trunks lie half buried in the bog. All about are 

 grass tussocks, some of them dry and withered, others 

 look green. Clumps of sedge, stiff, and with long 

 sword-like blades, breast-high, bright green in colour, 

 meet you at every few steps. Some caution is neces- 

 sary in passing through them, for they cut like a 

 knife if the contact is made in a certain direction, as 

 I have often proved to my cost. 



Inside this little jungle of aquatic vegetation it 

 is hot and stifling, with a disagreeable moist heat. 

 Very quietly we thread our way through the tangle, 

 treading when we can on the soft dead grass tussocks, 

 and peering through the boughs on either side for 

 some traces of the otter. 



A moorhen flits up from a tuft in a little pool, 

 with the usual crippled-leg flight of nesting-time. 

 The young are somewhere about. Close by, on a 

 half-buried alder trunk, steps cautiously a water-rail. 

 Often have I watched the movements of this bird 



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