96 IN THE GREEN LEAF 



tions are charming, but the hard work entailed 

 in making them is at times arduous. You may 

 have the very best water-tight boots that can 

 be made, but after hours of plashy tramping 

 your feet get chilled : then take your socks or 

 stockings off, moisten the feet of them with 

 whisky, put them on again, and lace your boots 

 up ; take a nip of the " creetur " as medicine, and 

 off you go again all right. For provender, oat- 

 meal biscuits are about the best you can carry : 

 a square meal is not to be thought about before 

 your day's work is done ; and even if you re- 

 quired one, you could not get it where I have 

 been recently, simply in order that I might look 

 at a small dull-coloured bird. Moths of some 

 size I know the furze- chat catches and kills ; 

 so do some other birds when the chance offers, 

 for I have seen the wings of hawk-moths pulled 

 from the bodies of their owners. What may 

 be under those furze thickets in the shape of 

 insect life, only the birds that live and shelter 

 there know. Once, and once only, I crawled 

 into one of these sanctuaries, and I have not 

 the least desire to repeat the experiment ; for 

 what with one mishap and another things were 

 too much for me. 



In the drier parts of fuz-wren land that active 



