BRITISH BIRDS. 297 



says, " Man made a double conquest when he sub- 

 dued inhabitants at once of the air and of the 

 water. Free in both these vast elements, equally 

 fitted to roam in the regions of the atmosphere, 

 to glide through the ocean or plunge under its 

 billows, the aquatic birds seemed destined by na- 

 ture to live for ever remote from our society, and 

 from the limits of our dominion." " Eggs taken 

 from the reeds and rushes amidst the water, and 

 set under an adopted mother, first produced, in our 

 farm-yards, wild, shy, fugitive birds, perpetually 

 roving and unsettled, and impatient to regain the 

 abodes of liberty/' These, however, after they had 

 bred and reared their own young in the domestic 

 asylum, became attached to the spot; and their 

 descendants in process of time, grew more and 

 more gentle and tractable, till at last they appear 

 to have nearly relinquished and forgotten the pre- 

 rogatives of the savage -state, although they still 

 retain a strong propensity to roam abroad, in 

 search, no doubt, of the larger pools, marshy 

 places, and bogs, which it is natural to suppose 

 they must prefer to the beaten, hard, pebbly- 

 covered surface, surrounding the scantily-watered 

 hamlet : and indeed it is well known to every ob- 

 serving good housewife, that where they are long 

 confined to such dry places, they degenerate in 

 both strength and beauty, and lose much of the 

 fine flavour of those which are reared in spots 

 more congenial to their nature. That these, and 

 such like watery places, which their health requires 

 for them to wash, dive, feed, rest, and sport in, 

 are not better tenanted by these useful and pretty 

 birds, is much to be regretted, and marks strongly 



VOL. II. 2 P 



