350 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



they had no boat and the birds were breeding- on a 

 detached rock between twenty and thirty yards 

 away, he conceived the notion of swimming over 

 to them with a rope round his neck and then haul- 

 ing his apparatus across after him. His first attempt 

 to swim the channel was attended by a rather nasty 

 accident. He had the misfortune to get his legs 

 entangled in some seaweed, and before he could 

 extricate himself a breaker hurled him back against 

 the rocks, from which he had just started, with 

 such force that he was badly bruised, scratched, 

 and cut. In spite of his hurts, however, he struck 

 out again, and eventually succeeded in reaching the 

 Cormorants' crag, with the blood trickling down 

 both legs, to the great alarm of his companion. 

 The rocks on either side of the channel being a 

 good height above the waves, enabled them to get 

 the camera across on the rope without anything 

 touching the water except the legs of the tripod. 



The picture on page 348 of a pair of Swallows 

 on a telegraph wire was obtained by rearing a 

 long ladder against one of the interior walls of a 

 lofty barn and putting the front of the camera 

 through a ventilator. At the foot of the ladder a 

 chained bull was praying all the while in a deep 

 bass voice that some unlucky slip might deliver the 

 photographer and his bit of mahogany and brass 

 over to his untender mercies. 



We have succeeded in making some very good 

 photographs from boats, but such pictures require 

 a good light and a rapid exposure, on account of 

 the difficulty of keeping any craft in the water 

 absolutely still. In the case of such nests or other 

 objects as are photographically unapproachable ex- 

 cept from a boat, and circumstances render a time 

 exposure imperative, we take soundings of the 



