134 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [CHAP. xvi. 



it would be an amusing variety in sporting to watch the bird as 

 he dived and pursued the fish in clear water. We might take a 

 hint from our brethren of the Celestial Empire with some ad- 

 vantage in this respect. 



A curious anecdote of a brood of young wild ducks was told 

 me by my keeper to-day. He found in some very rough, 

 marshy ground, which was formerly a peat-moss, eight young 

 ducks nearly full-grown, prisoners, as it were, in one of the old 

 peat-holes. They had evidently tumbled in some time before, 

 and had managed to subsist on the insects, &c. that it contained 

 or that fell into it. From the manner in which they had under- 

 mined the banks of their watery prison, the birds must have been 

 in it for some weeks. The sides were perpendicular, but there 

 were small resting-places under the bank which prevented their 

 being drowned. The size of the place they were in was about 

 eight feet square, and in this small space they had not only grown 

 up, but thrived, being fully as large and heavy as any other 

 young ducks of the same age. 



In shooting water-fowl I have often been struck by the fact 

 that as soon as ever life is extinct in a bird which falls in the 

 sea or river, the plumage begins to get wet and to be penetrated 

 by the water, although as long as the bird lives it remains dry 

 arid the wet runs off it. I can only account for this by sup- 

 posing that the bird, as long as life remains, keeps his feathers 

 in a position to throw off and prevent the water from entering 

 between them. This power is of course lost to the dead bird, 

 and the water penetrating through the outer part of the feathers 

 wets them all. This appears to be more likely than that the 

 feathers should be only kept dry by the oil supplied by the bird, 

 as the effect of this oil could not be so instantaneously lost as to 

 admit of wet as soon as the bird drops dead, while if the bird be 

 only wounded they remain dry. 



