92 Unexplored Spain 



few big ducks tlieu shot beiug either immature' or in poor 

 condition, from which it may be inferred that the main bodies 

 of all species have passed on to more congenial regions. 



About the 25tli September the first greylag geese appear. 

 These are not affected by the scarcity of water in any such degree 

 as ducks, since they only need to drink twice a day, morning and 

 evening, and make shift to subsist by digging up the bulb-like 

 roots of the spear-grass with their powerful bills. 



* f 



GREYLAG GEESE 



But SO soon as autumn rains have fallen, and the whole 

 marisma has become supplied with "new water," it at once fills 

 up with wildfowl — ducks and geese — in such variety and prodigious 

 quantities as we endeavour to describe in the following sketches. 



Wildfowl — 'twixt Cup and Lip 



Wildfowl beyond all the rest of animated nature lend them- 

 selves to spectacular display. For their enormous aggregations 

 (due as much to concentration within restricted haunts, as to 

 gregarious instinct, and to both these causes combined) are 

 always openly visible and conspicuous inasmuch as those haunts 

 are, in all lands, confined to shallow water and level marsh devoid 

 of cover or concealment. 



Thus, w^herever they congregate in their thousands and tens 

 of thousands, wildfowl are always in view — that is, to those who 

 seek them out in their solitudes. This last, however, is an 

 important proviso. For the haunts aforesaid are precisely those 

 areas of the earth's surface which are the most repugnant to man, 

 and least suited to his existence. 



In crowded England there survive but few of those dreary 



