APPENDICES 435 



yet never to be overlooked since its own activity arrests atten- 

 tion. With legs as long as a plover, for which (or a courser) 

 you may mistake it, it runs as fast as you can walk, and when 

 it finally rises, displays broad white-barred wings that recall 

 those of a hoopoe. Certhilauda remains associated with some 

 of the most desolate scenes on earth ; yet (though synchromatic) 

 he is never invisible no rwhat is tenfold more important 

 does he ever dream that he is so. 



One more example of reckless reasoning and I am done. It 

 refers to a bird-genus with which I have long been intimate 

 the Divers. These, it is argued, by virtue of being white beneath, 

 are thereby rendered invisible to their prey i.e., the fish that 

 swim below. Now whatever rules may regulate the eye-powers 

 of subaquatic creatures, we anglers at least are well aware that 

 those of fish are keen in the utmost. Yet it has been seriously 

 contended that the big sea-divers (Colymbi\ the goosanders, 

 guillemots, or grebes, will merely because they are white 

 below escape detection by fish swimming beneath them [a 

 cormorant or a darter, by parity of reasoning, because they 

 are black ?] The whole proposition, besides being initially 

 absurd, rests upon a total misconception of the life-system 

 of these specialised birds and a failure to grasp the measure 

 of their subaquatic capacity. Professional divers such as 

 the Colymbi will cover the length of Regent Street in 

 three or four dives, and that at a speed that is probably 

 double or treble that of the fish themselves. The contest 

 is a matter of speed, and the fastest wins. But never 

 a thought do these masters-of-the-art waste upon the few 

 paltry dozens of scared fish which having already observed 

 their enemy swimming right overhead have long ago sought 

 secure shelter. The diver, being no fool, only commences his 

 search for prey when well beyond eye-range of his point of 

 submersion. Even a human fisherman is careful so to present 

 his lures that the quarry may see them, but not himself. It 

 is only when the angler's invitation has been rejected that he 

 moves forward, exposing himself to the recusant in the expecta- 

 tion of finding more complacent victims farther on. 



Certain morals suggest themselves that before formulating 

 academic rules, a sympathetic insight into the conditions of 

 wild-life is essential ; secondly, that the application of human 



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