Anglesey 



once of suspicion and defiance. One may descant 

 as much as one pleases concerning the cowardliness 

 of birds of prey ; they are born nobles among birds. 

 No bird looks like that for nothing. In any case, it 

 ill-becomes man who plays the hen to imbecile, if 

 marketable, pheasants, and pours shot into birds of 

 this build and aspect, to discourse of cowardice. Up 

 to this point the young bird had been silent, but 

 now that it saw that the game was up, it took up the 

 cry of its mother, and, spreading its wings, flew to a 

 spot farther along the rocks. Then a second young 

 one came along the ledge to investigate matters on 

 its own account. With actions like those of the 

 first one, it too made off with the rasping cry of its 

 parents. 



Then I drew back and lay in the grass covering 

 the top of the cliff, watching the old bird, which 

 never desisted from its wild flight and wilder cry. 

 How strange it seemed this fierce maternity ; this 

 coupling of the tenderest instinct of all living things 

 with the bloody violence of the falcon ! It kills the 

 young of another that its own may live. Selfish 

 under one aspect, it is yet not self-seeking under 

 another. So is it ever with this double-faced 

 Nature with birds as with men. 



For any one keeping to the rocks as we did, 

 there is some stiff work between Dinmor and 

 Caregonen. The slope at the top of the cliff is at 

 times cut by deep fissures filled with brambles and 

 briars, which, when one's leg sinks in them to the 



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