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 



