SOME VISITING CARDS. 297 



species to which they belong is easily determined 

 by this character alone. Having thus made him- 

 self acquainted with the structural peculiarities of 

 the feet of birds (not from dried skins, by the way, 

 but from birds in the " flesh "), he must then be- 

 come familiar with the manner in which these feet 

 are used. Some birds take long and stately 

 strides, others take short steps ; many species 

 progress in hops, both feet held exactly side by 

 side ; whilst others, yet again, run quickly from 

 place to place. Again, there are some birds with 

 tarsi so short that they leave impressions of their 

 bodies behind them as well as footprints. 



Having acquired this preliminary knowledge, 

 let us go out on to the mud-flats on some wintry 

 morning. The inland woods and fields and roads 

 are lying deep in snow, but the muds are brown 

 and dismal-looking, their dreariness emphasized 

 by the strong contrast of colour. The tide has 

 long ebbed, leaving us a clean slate, as it were, 

 for the curious writing we have come to find and 

 read. Here and there on every side are the 

 runes of the feathered race that haunt this vast 

 expanse footprints straying up and down, tracks 

 crossing and recrossing in a perfect maze of con- 

 fusion. Footprints are everywhere round the 

 margins of the little tide-pools, imprinted in the 

 soft mud at the bottom of many of them, as the 

 wading birds that made them tripped through the 

 shallow water ; up and down the broad smooth 

 spaces, on the tiny mud-hills, in the hollows, and 



