96 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
would only be able to surmise the presence of a 
fish a few inches below the surface in the muddy 
streams of the pampas. To distinguish the species 
would never be possible. 
In this case the iron-hard dagger-like beak 
had been driven right through the fish from the 
bone-plated back to the belly, from which it 
projected about an inch and a half. With such 
power had the blow been delivered that it was only 
by exerting a good deal of force that I was able to 
wrench the beak out. My conclusion was that the 
bird would never have been able to free himself, and 
that by shooting him I had only saved him from the 
torture of a lingering death from starvation. The 
strange thing was that bird and fish had met their 
end simultaneously in that way: I doubted that 
such a thing had ever happened before or would 
ever happen again. From that time I began to pay 
a good deal of attention to the dead “old women” 
I found along the river-bank with a hole in their 
back, and could never find one in which the beak 
had been driven right through the body. In every 
case the beak had gone in about half-way through 
—just far enough to enable the bird to fly to the 
shore with its inconvenient captive and there get 
rid. of it. 
Death by accident is common enough in wild 
life, and a good proportion of such deaths are due 
to an error of judgement, often so slight as not to 
