AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 



its hideous face furnished with a pair of un- 

 naturally elongated eyebrows, and its mouth 

 with sharpest teeth, they would destroy, in the 

 course of a few days, thousands upon thousands 

 of eggs. There was a little brown-coated bird.* 

 with a white waistcoat, the neatest, pleasantest- 

 looking creature imaginable, who would wallcf 

 deliberately into the stream, and, setting at 

 defiance all laws of gravity, peck away at 

 marine insects, floating morsels of spawn, and 



1 greatly fear, though I never actually witnessed 

 the atrocity, little samlets like myself. There 

 was a company of black-headed gulls,;!: who, 

 with loud laughing cry, perpetually hovered 

 over the stream, and, though their professed 

 object was to feed upon the March brown fly 

 which, dead or alive, in countless myriads lined 

 the shore, or covered the face of the waters, 

 never let slip an opportunity of snapping up 

 some little brother or sister that had carelessly 

 left its place of refuge. Then the kingfisher, 

 with rufous breast and glorious mantle of blue, 



* The Water Ouzel Cinclus Aquaticus. 

 t Waterton doubts this, but I have seen the operation, 

 times and oft. Ed. 



J The Laughing Gull Larus Ridibundus. 



