BRITISH REPTILES 
.and the snakes left the sedge-beds to come into the 
dykes to feed on them, it was a sight beyond the 
belief of all inland dwellers. There the snakes were 
in numbers. They did not have all their own way in 
the matter, moreover, for birds of prey fed upon them 
in -their turn. Kites, the forked-tailed kites, harriers, 
hooded crows, those that remained to breed with the 
carrion crows ; herons and bitterns came also ; but 
the frogs formed the principal food for all the others 
that had their homes in such places otters, polecats, 
stoats, weasels, spoonbills, nearly all the duck tribe 
capable of swallowing them, besides the fish, pike, 
perch, and eels. 
It is all very well to state that such and such 
authorities give certain lists of creatures as the food 
of others. Most of this is sheer humbug ; only those 
who have lived with the creatures in their haunts, 
crawled like the reptiles around them, waded in foul 
marsh-water up to the neck, and got the deadly 
marsh fever through it, know really much about that. 
I have seen a duck knock and bang about a small 
reptile in a most determined manner, and then swallow 
it down like a worm, after it had been quite disabled. 
No reptile from ten inches to twelve inches is any 
trouble to a duck, after it has been killed and flattened 
out by being rapidly passed through the birds serrated 
