THE DAILY LIFE OF OUE FAEM. 7 



Parenthetically, we would observe that all sorts of 

 fowl invariably hatch a larger per-centage when they 

 are allowed to make their own nests than when they 

 are set by the henwife. 



But to return to our duck : just as she proudly sails 

 by through a strait, beside which we are in ambush, 

 with her merry dark young brood in tow, that are 

 veering around so sharp and jumping at the flies, just 

 then we slip under the landing-net and whip out a 

 pair ; then three, and a fourth, and six more, and there 

 is a grand piping in chorus of distressed and affrighted 

 duck juvenility in the covered basket ; and then, alas 

 for the feelings of maternity ! the whole new brood 

 being walked off briskly to the old henwife's charge, 

 our parent duck but takes a header in the dark flood, 

 and flirts her tail and washes, and feels, no doubt, 

 delightfully her change from incubation to her cool 

 native element, and away she sails down the water- 

 side, so enjoyingly drinking up her beakers, if we may 

 use the expression, until her lord and master observing 

 her, there is a chase and a flight, and they are lost 

 to sight; all ending, however, in her, within a few 

 days, refeathering a nest, and depositing new eggs, and 

 commencing a new term of earnest reproduc(k)tion. 

 Whereas, meanwhile we, the hard-hearted ones, bear 

 off our wailing freight, finally to turn them out into 

 a wire-fenced covered court, where there is an old 

 duck hissing at us over her already almost overgrown 

 charge, which, with this new accession, now numbers 

 forty-odd ducklings. All these, however, during the 

 day she proudly and efficiently attends to, instructing 

 them to paddle in the milk -pan that just floats with 

 an inch of water upon a sod of grass, as well as the 



