184 EGYPTIAN BIRDS 
possibly he is right. It is the same smart little 
bird we have at home, and the male has, when 
showing off, a most attractive appearance, of 
which it is fully aware, as is shown by its 
jaunty carriage. Of all duck, this is the quickest 
off the mark; how it does it one can hardly see, 
but it leaves the water in one second, apparently 
at top speed, as if it had been going for some 
minutes. As with the Shoveller this duck comes 
in great numbers to the Cairo Zoological Gardens, 
and the ready intelligence it shows in remaining 
in full sight of men and flying close over their 
heads whilst in the Gardens, and the wary care 
it shows the moment it is outside the sanctuary, 
is most interesting. On wall-paintings I am told 
it is depicted, but I am not certain that I have 
ever seen its small form shown; in the matter 
of relative size of living and other objects, these 
old craftsmen were curiously capricious. A notable 
illustration of this is in the way they portrayed 
the wives of the heroic Rameses statues, where 
you will find the lady shown coming up only to 
the knee-jomt of her gigantic lord and master. 
When they treated royal ladies in this way, it is 
useless to expect great accuracy in the matter of 
rendering the various relative sizes of humble water- 
