THE WESTERN BEND 237 



comestibles. Their flavour as a rule resembled boiled 

 cotton-wool with a sprinkling of pins thrown in. Still 

 it was a relief from the everlasting tiang, tinned tomatoes, 

 and guinea-fowl. 



Correspondingly the whole Nilotic atmosphere is 

 "blue" with fishers of every order. There are the native 

 savages on bank and boat, plying ceaseless nets, traps, 

 lines even spears thrown at a venture oft impale a 

 2O-pounder. Then there are swarming icthyophagi in 

 form of bird, beast, and reptile. Pelicans in droves daily 

 scoop up fish by tons upon tons ; there are literally 

 millions of herons, ibises, darters, cormorants, and the 

 rest, that above water and below incessantly work 

 the 12-hour shift unless "previously full." Amid such 

 society, a sprinkling of otters, ospreys, fish-eagles, and 

 kingfishers scarcely count ; but the crocodiles count for 

 much. The daily toll of these huge and voracious reptiles 

 passes calculation. Nowhere else (inland) can there be 

 seen such bewildering variety in the piscivorous orders ; 

 yet the victims thrive and multiply exceedingly. 1 



I have elsewhere drawn attention to the widely diver- 

 sified types of equipment designed by Nature to fulfil one 

 and the same purpose. It appears a flaccid and altogether 

 unsatisfying sort of "science" that extols, as "special 

 adaptations," the merganser's serrated mandibles, the 

 darter's backset teeth, and so on, yet ignores the fact 

 that herons, grebes, colymbi, etc., are equally efficient in 

 the self-same pursuit although devoid of all such specialised 

 armament. 



In the herons, which secure their prey by a direct 

 bayonet-thrust, there is a curious kink in the vertebrae 

 of the neck ; and in the darter this kink is even more 

 pronounced one of the bones being articulated at practi- 



1 It may be worth passing note that there are on Nile no repre- 

 sentatives of the palaearctic -goosanders, mergansers, grebes, colymbi, or 

 other divers of that ilk. All these hunt their prey by sight and speed 

 alone, and the opaque mud-charged waters of Nile would be abhorrent 

 to them ; yet, per contra, darters and cormorants solve the problem. 



