10 JANUARY 



bird's foot, which though sensitive and nourished by 

 a flow of blood, yet can resist frostbite during hours 

 of contact with the ice. When one of these birds 

 wakes, he waddles contentedly to the open water, 

 slips over the edge, swims about for a little, then 

 out again, and to sleep once more. The diving 

 ducks pochard, tufted duck, and goldeneye sleep 

 by choice on the water. So long as there is an 

 unfrozen space they will not leave it. It is starva- 

 tion and not cold from which birds die in a hard 

 season. Woodcocks and seagulls can stand a very 

 low temperature, yet thousands of each died in the 

 long frost. The former have been very scarce in 

 consequence during the succeeding winter of 1895-96. 



ill 



This lake is a never-failing source of interest to 

 A Lake me< Occupying about one hundred 



Sanctuary acreSj bosomed in sloping woods, and 

 distant from the sea not more than a mile of bird- 

 flight, it is resorted to by great numbers of water- 

 fowl of many kinds. For more than half a century 

 it has been treated as a sanctuary. No impious gun 

 is allowed to be fired there a regulation which, in 

 my salad days, I used to denounce bitterly as 



