Birds' Courtship and Marriage 195 



them together in the opaline light of an April 

 dawn. To quote from Ella Wheeler Wilcox's 

 "Birth of the Opal'' perhaps: "The dying day 

 was their priest." "For this cause," says the old 

 marriage service, "a man shall leave his father 

 and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and 

 they shall be one flesh." Now this is as true of 

 ducks as of humans, and as true of Mrs. Hen as 

 of Mr. Drake. In the case in hand, she did the 

 cleaving; leaving her family and following her 

 uncivilized husband to a nearby island, where she 

 performed the duties of wife and missionary to 

 the heathen, at one and the same time. 



During the long-drawn-out period of incuba- 

 tion her family were more or less devoted, mak- 

 ing frequent calls when they were swimming by, 

 and who knows, aunts and cousins and even sis- 

 ters may have asked the family's new member to 

 take a little swim with them, but he never did. He 

 surely looked lonesome as he swam back and forth 

 in the lagoon near the nest and I am certain he 

 was; and my six-year-old granddaughter dubbed 

 him Dr. Mally because he did so much quacking. 

 How "Mally" caught the spirit of our civiliza- 

 tion, heaven only knows. I am dealing in facts, 

 not psychology, and it is a fact that the very next 

 year he had five white wives and two gray ones, 

 and his name should have been changed to Lot. 



The aimless Puckyan is a stream so crooked 



