428 SAVAGE SUDAN 



First let us take wildfowl. For a full half-century I have 

 followed the wildfowler's craft, afloat and ashore, and with 

 equal enthusiasm as gunner and naturalist alike. Hence it is 

 physically improbable that many men now living can speak 

 from a longer experience. 



The outstanding character in winter wildfowl would seem 

 to need no new description ; yet some measure of re-description 

 is necessitated when we have to combat fallacies such as this. 

 Briefly put : Wildfowl, as a rule, are creatures of large size ; 

 they comprise, in fact, some of the largest flying-forms extant. 

 Secondly, they include groups of every conceivable colour, many 

 of them strikingly conspicuous afar ; such, for example, as the 

 wild swans and geese, pelicans, flamingos, shelducks. Thirdly, 

 wildfowl are highly gregarious, accustomed to assemble in 

 masses that are commonly computable by the hundred, more 

 often by the thousand units. Fourthly, the selected homes of 

 these masses are invariably upon open waters, on shallow fore- 

 shore, or tidal estuary all three situations as flat as a floor 

 and totally devoid of a scrap of covert or concealment. Fifthly 

 (and incidentally), most wildfowl are of such clamorous dis- 

 position that for a mile around, their raucous cries proclaim 

 both their presence and their precise position. 



Now, unless this quintuple combination of characters be 

 disputed or denied, it is obviously incompatible with any 

 conceivable creed such as that above quoted. Even were it 

 possible to accept a proposition that large and conspicuous 

 objects assembled in solid masses on open spaces where 

 they literally challenge attention and where no means of 

 concealment exist (even were it sought, which is never the 

 case ) are nevertheless invisible to the scientific eye (through 

 concealing colours or otherwise), we should yet have to 

 swallow the further inference that their united clamour was 

 equally inaudible to scientific ear. 



As regards colour alone, here are a couple of extracts from 

 my wildfowling diary : " February 25th, 1918. This morning 

 at 8 A.M. two thousand brent-geese sat ' parliamenting ' on the 

 slob a mile to the westward. In the low rays of the rising sun 

 they showed up white as seagulls. At 4.30 P.M., with the sun 

 straight behind them, these same geese appeared black as 

 coals. . . . Towards noon sighted two wild swans to the south- 



