86 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



the rest, with a brownish white down of the 

 same hue as the withered leaf on which it skulks, 

 see here is the fourth. If you lift them gently 

 in your hand, listen to their feeble "peep! 

 peep!" touch their tender bills, and watch how 

 shrewdly each tiny urchin toddles off to hide 

 behind the tendrils of a surface root, or an empty 

 tortoise shell, you might almost take them for 

 the children of the fabled Mossmen. 



And yet so helpless do they seem in that soli- 

 tary range of forest, that it appears almost a mi- 

 racle they do not fall a prey to the snake, the 

 raccoon, the opossum, and other voracious 

 prowlers of the night; But though feeble, they 

 TOW fast, and the same maternal care which 



O ' 



kept its vigil so long on the nest, is now equally 

 provident to supply and preserve the callow 

 brood. 



A month later you are abroad again ; Ponto is 

 inclined to range out, and you to permit him ; 

 at length, after a little preliminary scouting, he 

 either draws up at the side of a rivulet, or, per- 

 haps, as if struck by a sudden reminiscence, 

 goes straight up to the foot of the great tree on 

 the same sombre spot, where the earth beneath 

 the dead leaves is still wet, although the ponds 

 and marshy nooks of the wood are beginning to 



