358 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



Last spring we were trying to photograph a 

 Wild Duck sitting on her nest in a steep bank 

 leading down to a pond eight feet deep. She 

 could only be approached from the front, so we 

 procured a couple of wooden trestles and a long 

 ladder, and interlocking the former, pushed them 

 out beneath the latter. My brother then walked 

 along the ladder, and with the assistance of sundry 

 sticks managed to fix up his camera. Just as he 

 was about to make a picture, the trestles slipped, and 

 photographer and camera fell with a tremendous 

 splash into the pond, and the startled Duck flew 

 away in a hurry. 



One of the great difficulties connected with 

 natural history photography is the recharging of 

 dark slides, and we have more than once had a 

 valuable batch of plates fogged in doing so by 

 means of a changing bag. At the outset of my 

 brother's photographic career, he one day, whilst 

 on the moors in North Yorkshire, conceived 

 the idea of crawling far enough up a disused lead- 

 mine to meet with darkness sufficiently dense for 

 his purpose, as he had forgotten his changing 

 bag. Just as he was congratulating himself upon 

 having reached a point suitable for his purpose, he 

 fell head over heels into an old shaft full of icy 

 cold water. 



We have essayed the portrayal of winged 

 insects at work and play, but found it an even 

 more difficult and tedious task than that of making 

 photographic studies of wild birds and beasts in 

 their native haunts. One sunny day, whilst out 

 hunting for subjects for the camera on a friend's 

 farm, we discovered a couple of large Dragon-flies 

 floating backwards and forwards across a cattle 

 pond. We watched their airy swingings to and 



