LOVE MAKING 241 



field nothing seems to come amiss to him. He 

 feeds by night as well as by day, and much more 

 by night than by day, plunging his bill deeply into 

 the ooze, and sifting, by fineness and delicacy of 

 touch alone, that which is nutritious from that 

 which is the reverse, of all that filters through 

 the fringe of minute saw-like teeth which lines his 

 mandibles. 



The time of year at which the wild duck is 

 most interesting, and most open to observation is, 

 as in the case of other birds, the breeding season. 

 The drake and duck pair very early in the spring. 

 Their courtship is graceful enough ; but it is as 

 ceremonious, and must prove as tedious to all but 

 those who are personally concerned, as, it must 

 be admitted, is the love-making portion of the story, 

 in the otherwise incomparable novels of Sir Walter 

 Scott. Waterton, who was an intense lover of 

 Nature, and a careful preserver of all wild birds, 

 used to watch the punctilious etiquette of the would- 

 be lovers, from the hollow of an old oak tree growing 

 on a steep hill, above his sheet of water ; and I have 

 often done the same, with the help of a magnifying 

 glass, from amidst the heather of the solitary fir 

 plantation in Dorsetshire, to which I have so often 

 referred in previous chapters the plantation in which 



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