ANIMALS IN THE DARK 151 



fowler who has had forty years' experience of night- 

 shooting on the marshes, quoted in the Badminton 

 Magazine some time ago, gives it as his opinion that 

 all wildfowl see distinctly by night, but that, on the 

 other hand, they do not recognise objects which they 

 do not expect to see. They see and avoid a man 

 walking, but if he is still they apparently mistake him 

 for a piece of wreck or debris. Thus, when sitting in 

 * duck holes, 1 with the moon nine days old, he has 

 known a pair of stints settle on the bank of the hole, 

 and once caught one with his hand. He has also 

 known an owl to fly into the hole and perch on the 

 marram-grass with which it was lined ; while another 

 gunner declares that as he lay on his back on the 

 shingle one night a mallard pitched between his feet 

 and began to preen its feathers ! The more familiar an 

 observer grows with the ways of animals after dark 

 and in the very early morning, the more convinced he 

 is likely to become that they have made it an axiom 

 that man is, or ought to be, in bed from dusk till 

 six o'clock, and that even if he is not, the world during 

 the hours of darkness and dawn belongs to them alone. 



