3|une 



XXIX 



HERE is a pretty note from a lady living in Surrey 

 upon the precocious powers of waterhen 

 chicks. I give it in her own words, for she waterhens 

 is entitled to the credit of having supplied learn to 

 the solution of a problem which has puzzled 

 many people namely, how, when a waterhen or moor- 

 hen chooses, as she sometimes does, to build in a tree, 

 the young are conveyed to the water and taught to 

 swim. It seems that no instruction is required : 



'The moorhens which always come to nest in our pond 

 have chosen this year to build in a branch of the cypress 

 that overhangs the water, twelve feet from its surface. My 

 sisters and I often speculated how the young birds would get 

 to the pond, so when one was seen swimming about one 

 morning in July, we, with a niece and our gardener (five 

 people in all), went to watch the nest, where, one after 

 another, six little moorhens could be seen scrambling up on 

 to the edge and falling over into the water, to disappear for 

 a second and then paddle to the bank. I caught one, and 

 think, from its general appearance and the weakness of its 

 legs, it can only just have emerged from the egg. The 

 parent birds called to their young from the water all the 

 while, and collected them with care after their descent ; then 



