Tae ZooLocist—Marcu, 1872. 2975 
eschew his companionship. Self-preservation is the first law of 
human nature. I turn to the before-breakfast hour :— 
* Hvery naturalist discovers, sooner or later, that one hour abroad before 
breakfast is worth half a dozen afterwards. All nature is then seen to per- 
fection ; flowers which close their tender petals at noon are found at morn 
in all their beauty, on each expanded leaf a glistening drop; the birds, which 
are silent throughout the heat of the day, pour forth at early light their 
loudest melodies ; the wild-fowl are busy feeding on the ooze, and the various 
species of shore birds, profiting by the first ebb-tide, are running here and 
there over the glistening sands, gleaning hastily the harvest of the sea.”— 
BS27. 
“Every naturalist” knows how true is this. My next quotation 
exhibits the author lying in a punt in a drain in one of the Sussex 
harbours: we wish he had not chosen Sussex harbours for the 
theatre of his labours. 
“On one occasion we were lying in a punt in a ‘drain’ (as the small 
channels in the Sussex harbours are called), a little below a point where 
another ‘drain’ intersected it almost at right angles. In the latter we had 
marked down two curlews when several hundred yards off, and observed that 
they were feeding towards the junction of the two ‘drains.’ It is always a 
piece of luck if birds feed towards you after you have got as near to them as 
you can without alarming them. And this was the case in the present 
instance. The curlews waded up the side of the drain, which was much 
shallower than the one we were lying in, and in about ten minutes one of 
them stepped out upon the flat within twenty yards of the punt, and for a 
moment seemed perfectly scared. We at once cocked the gun and sat up; 
with a weird scream the bird took wing, and in another second fell dead 
upon the mud. His companion, rising out of the drain some yards further 
off, was only winged, and led us a rare chase over the ooze before he was 
secured. ‘This incident shows that the curlew depends for safety upon his 
keen sight, and not upon his power of scent; otherwise the bird in question 
would never have walked within a few yards of the punt, which he could 
not see until he had stepped upon the bank.”—P. 49. 
I entirely agree in the opinion that the curlew depends for 
safety on his sight, not on his scent: the inquiry whether this is so 
with birds generally, and whether we can extend it to the search 
for food as well as for safety, can scarcely be rendered inviting, 
unless by the talent of a Waterton; but it seems rather illogical to 
doubt the powers of an eye and an ear so perfect as they are in 
birds, and to assign their functions to the nose, as some naturalists 
