12 WILD BIRDS 



were full fledged or almost so, whereas these implets 

 were but lately free of the shells. How the precocity 

 of the moorhen nestlings has come about hardly 

 allows of doubt. It was worked out by the life- 

 wasting but extremely sure method evolution. 

 The nestlings of these grebes, rails and ducks must 

 be precocious or perish. A moorhen must take to 

 the water swifter than a swift to the air. 



So, in the ages that made the moorhen the bird 

 it is to-day, the chicks less forward than their fellows 

 must have tended to die out, whilst the more pre- 

 cocious chicks tended to survive. And the standard 

 of precocity in these nestlings needs must be very 

 high. Imagine a moorhen nestling at its birth, 

 being blind, naked, and helpless as a blackbird or 

 a song thrush nestling, and you can scarcely imagine 

 it as having a chance to survive. It is born in a 

 nest that often is waterlogged, and in a spot often 

 infested by foes. One can hardly fail to see evolu- 

 tion working on the moorhen nestling by its great 

 instrument, natural selection. 



I never watch the rails, crakes, and moorhens, 

 without marvelling that such utter sluggards on 

 the wing should be among the regular migrants, 

 able, at times, to make great journeys over sea and 

 land. Take the moorhen. In the winter it is 

 sprightly enough, and when pressed hard by dogs 

 it can fly from one marshy spot or spinney to 

 another not far off. But even so it gives one the 

 idea of unease in the air, and is a slow flier, settling 

 ere it has gone the length of a fair-sized field. Its 



