AT THE ESTUARY 139 



this is essentially a human device. Is there chal- 

 lenging ? I think not. The bee that does not come 

 to the hive on legitimate business is recognised for a 

 foe at once, and driven off without parley. A guard 

 then there is among bees, and in a strong hive an 

 efficient guard ; but its composition is obscure ; I do 

 not know whether a bee guard is a honey-gatherer 

 one time, a soldier another, or whether it is born and 

 dies a guard. A delicate experiment might answer 

 this question ; if the bee-master could mark a number 

 of guards one day, and watch another day to see if his 

 marked bees mounted guard again, or came to the 

 hive with honey and pollen, our knowledge would be 

 increased. Exceptionally, no doubt, many honey- 

 gatherers become soldiers ; but this is when the hive 

 is attacked and there is a general resort to arms. 



To return to the sea fowl's toilet. Even with the 

 self-acting machinery of feather arrangement by which 

 the plumage adjusts itself, duck or cormorant will 

 spend over an hour a day grooming itself. When 

 not dozing, the wild ducks, indeed, by day have little 

 else to do on sea or sand than preen their feathers, 

 and by toilet, scrupulously nice, keep themselves free 

 from evil parasite. The fishy cormorant does not seem 

 the bird to be fastidious in toilet. Yet we may do the 

 cormorant injustice. When a prisoner, he appears 

 to have little sanitary instinct as the nesting star- 

 ling and other birds have. But often in a wild state, 

 nearly an hour at a stretch, the cormorant will comb 



